


we're letting go tonight

by cupcakeb



Series: trioverse [1]
Category: Elite (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Carla and Lu Are Friends, Cayetana literally doesn’t exist sorry, F/M, Half-Sibling Incest, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, polo isn't dead, these kids deserve to have some fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:34:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 44,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24742405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupcakeb/pseuds/cupcakeb
Summary: Lu graduates high school and finds she has very little patience left for depriving herself of the things she craves.Basically: Summer. Fun-loving, attractive, young people. A move across Europe for college. Hijinks ensue.OR: Polo doesn't die, Lu gets to know a whole new side of him and Valerio is... Valerio.
Relationships: Lucrecia "Lu" Montesinos Hendrich/Leopoldo "Polo" Benavent Villada, Lucrecia "Lu" Montesinos Hendrich/Valerio Montesinos Hendrich, Polo Benavent/Valerio Montesinos, Polo/Lu/Valerio
Series: trioverse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2080422
Comments: 68
Kudos: 143





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> While rewatching season three, I couldn't help but wonder what the dynamic would be like if you switched out the girl in the infamous Polo/Valerio trio... and, yeah. This is that. 
> 
> Polo didn’t die, they had a completely normal graduation party, no one got kicked out of school. Just go with it. (Basically ignoring ALL of the stupid s3 plotlines)
> 
> Rated explicit for... reasons. You'll find out in later chapters.

Carla makes the first move, because she’s always been the bigger person between the two of them. 

It’s been a week since graduation, and Lu is more than relieved to find her father has retreated to Mexico for the summer, on his usual trip for official affairs. The first thing she did when she found out is tell Valerio to stop staying with whoever the fuck he was staying with (she didn’t ask) and have him move back into the house with her. Mainly because she felt guilty but also because she doesn’t want to spend her entire summer alone and — well, it’s not like she really even still has friends.  
  
Nadia is her friend now, sure, but Nadia is moving to New York to go to Columbia and Lu isn’t. It’s not the worst thing in the world, knowing she was beaten for the scholarship, but it still means she’s going to be an ocean away from the girl; she isn’t planning on investing much time in their friendship. They hang out sometimes, and it’s fun, but it’s not the sort of dynamic Lu usually goes for.  
  
She’s friends with Omar, too, but he has Ander and a job and is really just the kind of casual acquaintance that she loves to drunkenly catch up with and hug.  
  
Anyway, Carla texts her and tells her to come over for lunch and champagne, and Lu is relieved. They’ve barely spoken all year, and when they did speak it was mostly catty insults — it’s nice to know Carla wants to put all of that behind her as well. 

They don’t say they’re sorry. They’re not the kind of people who do — but when Carla, after three glasses of champagne, tells her they have a lot of catching up to do, Lu nods, says, “Yeah bitch, where have you been?”, and things feel... right, somehow. 

Carla tells her about Yeray, about the fucked up shit her dad pulled, and Lu gets so angry on her behalf, she’s glad she didn’t know about it at the time or else she may have killed him. Her own life for the past six months suddenly doesn’t seem so bad.

Then, she talks about her brief experimental phase with drugs, says, “Valerio tried to warn me, but I didn’t listen,” and Lu wonders when Val became a decent guy. 

Maybe they have a lot of catching up to do, too. 

**  
  
A few days later they’re lounging at her pool, and she’s about three gin and tonics past caring about keeping secrets from Carla.  
  
They’ve been friends since they were thirteen, best friends since they were fourteen, and she’s honestly really, really tired of keeping this part of her life a secret.  
  
It’s risky, telling her about this, but she knows Carla has done some pretty horrible things in her life, too, so she can’t judge her too harshly.  
  
“… And then dad found out, and he kicked Val out and cut me off, basically,” she mutters, almost nonchalantly, and tries to gauge the blonde’s reaction.  
  
Carla sits up and stares at Lu over the top of her Gucci sunglasses. Her lips curl upwards in an amused smirk, and the shocked reaction Lu was expecting doesn’t materialize. Instead, Carla chuckles quietly. “I always thought you two were too close,” she finally says.  
  
Lu scoffs, raises her glass in a mocking toast. “Not close enough,” she settles on, doesn’t elaborate further and rolls her eyes when Carla raises her eyebrows suggestively.  
  
Of course Valerio chooses that exact moment to walk outside wearing the tiniest pair of speedos she’s ever seen. If she’s being honest, she’s glad he’s wearing clothes at all since he typically swims in the nude.  
  
“Hello there, ladies,” he muses, dives into the pool elegantly, and emerges seconds later, shaking his hair out like he’s in one of those slow-motion montages in a really cheesy movie.  
  
Carla gives her a not-so-subtle look, and she briefly wonders if telling her the truth had been a good idea. She’s never gonna stop teasing her now.  
  
And because Val wouldn’t be Val otherwise, he gets out of the pool, abs glistening in the summer sun, and sits down on the floor between the two lounge chairs the girls are on, leaning his head against Lu’s thigh.  
  
“What are we talking about?” He asks, steals Lu’s glass out of her hand and chugs the drink.  
  
She fixes the back of his head with a glare, puts a hand on his shoulder and leans in. “You being an obnoxious showoff,” she says mockingly, and he covers her hand with his own.  
  
“What can I say? It runs in the family,” he smirks, trying to duck away when Lu playful smacks his head.  
  
Carla studies the drink in her hand, trying not to laugh, and finally looks over at Valerio. “Grab a glass, we could use some male energy in this conversation.”  
  
When Valerio comes back from the kitchen, Carla pours him a drink and smirks at him.  
  
“So,” she probes, and Lu can tell by the glint in her eye she’s about to ask a very direct question. “How’s my ex?”  
  
Valerio chuckles, a sheepish smile on his face and looks back at Lu briefly. “A gentleman never kisses and tells,” he declares and Lu rolls her eyes.  
  
“That’s Valerio for ‘ _it’s not a sure thing at the moment_ ’, for the record,” Lu taunts. The way Val scoffs and follows it up with a short laugh confirms her suspicions — that’s one of his tells.  
  
Valerio isn’t fazed by the remark, though, just turns away from Lu and launches a full charm offensive as he looks over at Carla. “Ignore her — how have you been, _marquesita_?”  
  
Lu feels oddly comfortable, just hanging out with the two of them — like all the drama and murder and gossip is behind them. Maybe everything doesn’t have to be complicated and deep and frustrating all the time. Maybe they can have a chill summer before they go their separate ways.  
  
For the first time in a while, life feels alright to Lu.  
  
**

It’s Nadia’s idea to get everyone together for drinks in early July. Nadia invites Lu, who drags Carla and Valerio along. When Valerio hugs Polo outside of the bar, Carla and Lu pause to stare, both thinking the same thing. ( _Why the fuck is he here?_ ) But they’ve put most of the fucked up high school drama behind them, so maybe Polo deserves a fresh start as well. Hell, if Guzmán can forgive him, who are they to hold a grudge? 

Carla goes over and kisses him on both cheeks, says something about the tan from his trip to Antigua looking good on him, and Lu gives him a resigned look and waves. 

As the boys walk in, Lu grabs Carla’s arm to pull her closer. “Why the fuck do you know anything about where he’s vacationing?” She says under her breath, more confused than annoyed. 

“Our moms talk,” Carla mutters and rolls her eyes. “I think they were more upset than I was when we broke up.” 

Satisfied with that answer, Lu scoffs, puts her arm through Carla’s and pulls her along. They had a few shots before coming here to avoid any potential awkwardness and Carla chuckles, nudges Lu’s shoulder with her own. “You’re so much fun when you drink,” she says. 

Lu sighs, always a fan of being dramatic.

“I’ll be even more fun two drinks from now, darling.” 

** 

It’s not that Lu has any issue with being single, really. She’s an independent woman of the 21st century, and all that jazz. But as she looks around the cute outdoor area of the bar they’re at, she can’t help but notice how everyone else is paired off and she’s… alone.  
  
Nadia is sitting next to Guzmán, holding his hand casually, and she’s happy for them — really. No part of her wishes them anything but the best, and it’s not like she ever had a future with Guzmán, no matter how much she tried to pretend. That doesn’t mean it stings any less though, even as they try to keep the PDA to a minimum and make an effort to keep a conversation going with her.  
  
Of course there’s Omar and Ander, who she has to admit are probably the most functional couple she’s ever met. They’re casual about their relationship, just little caring gestures here and there, and she thinks it’s cute. It’s nice to see her group of friends — or whoever these people are to her at this point, she doesn’t even know what to call them — be so open and welcoming.  
  
Carla is currently sat across from Samuel, trying very hard to pretend like she isn’t noticing the looks he’s giving her and Lu rolls her eyes. She’d say something, but she’s pretty sure Carla has some sort of plan here, so it’s probably none of her business. (She doesn’t know what the hell anyone sees in Samuel, thinks he looks like a brooding 90s boyband member, but she guesses that’s none of her business either.)  
  
Then there’s Valerio, who is chatting animatedly with Polo and Ander, and she doesn’t know if they’re actually still seeing each other, or whatever, but the thought of it makes her irrationally angry. Valerio is an adult, and can do whatever he wants, but she’s not gonna pretend that she enjoys seeing him with other people. She probably never will. Polo laughs at something Valerio says, grabs his shoulder and pulls him closer as they chuckle, and Lu chugs the rest of the gin in her glass as she tries not to openly glare.  
  
She almost finds herself wishing someone had invited Rebeka tonight just so she wouldn’t be left without a sparring partner.  
  
With everyone wrapped up in their conversations, Lu gets up to get another drink. She’s sufficiently tipsy already, but another can’t hurt.  


As she orders a gin and tonic, she feels an arm wrap around her waist and smiles when she recognizes who it belongs to.  
  
“Hey girl,” Omar says and squeezes her hip. “How’s things?” He motions to the bartender for another round and clinks his glass to hers when a vodka soda is put down in front of him.  
  
Lu crowds against him, half-hugs him back. She plasters on a smile, even though she feels a little lonely and off. “You know, drinking, shopping, a lot of time at the pool — summer.”  
  
He hums in agreement. “And where are you off to in September?”  
  
It’s a loaded question, mainly because she hasn’t told anyone yet. The plan was Columbia and New York, then it became Oxford, but then she got accepted into UCL. London had always been a place she wanted to move to, the sort of bustling metropolitan city she could see herself starting over in, so the decision wasn’t that difficult to make. While UCL may not be the number one university in the world, it still ranks tenth, and that has to count for something.  
  
She’s not sure she’s ready to tell anyone, though, especially because the second she says it out loud, the rest of their friend group will know. So she puts on her most convincing faux casual smile, shrugs her shoulders, and says “Who knows, Boston, London, Paris — I’m still deciding,” like she hasn’t been looking at apartments in London for over a month.  
  
Omar laughs, calls her ridiculous. “Well, text me when you figure it out so I can make plans to visit,” he says finally, and she gives him a grateful smile.  
  
He leaves her at the bar, and she takes a big gulp of her drink, then a deep breath before walking back over to their table. A small part of her is really, really excited to get away from all of these people after the summer — to start over with new people she hasn’t known since she was thirteen.  
  
A bigger part of her loves this small group of dysfunctional idiots she’s grown accustomed to. _Yeah_ , she thinks, they better fucking visit her. 

**  
  
She finds Carla at the bar. They’ve been hanging out for a few hours and most of them seem to be well on their way to drunk. It’s nice, seeing everyone let loose.  


“We’re gonna go,” Lu tells the blonde, hugging her goodbye.  
  
Carla follows her gaze to where Valerio is chatting with a very drunk Polo and giggles.  
  
“What, you and the boys?” Lu isn’t sure she follows. She nods, and Carla gives her a devious smirk.  
  
Hitting her arm, Lu rolls her eyes at her. “Don’t you dare say it.”  
  
But Carla has never been the kind of girl to shy away from bluntness.  
  
“That’s a threesome waiting to happen.”  
  
Lu screeches, her mouth falling open in shock. Laughing, she shakes her head.  
  
“I think you’ve had too much to drink,” she whispers, and watches Carla eye Samuel across the bar, a small smile playing on her lips.  
  
The blonde shakes her head and throws the rest of her drink back dramatically. “Not nearly enough.”  
  
“Good luck,” Lu tells her, gives her shoulder a pat and walks off towards Valerio and Polo, who drunkenly hug her.  
  
Back at their house, Valerio deposits a half-asleep Polo on the living room couch downstairs.  
  
Lu watches him sleep for a minute and has to admit the moonlight is doing great things for his cheekbones. God, she must be drunker than she thought if she’s stooped to the level of creepy that is watching someone sleep.  
  
Valerio tiptoes over, puts a hand on her hip from behind and chuckles quietly. “He’s pretty when he sleeps, right?”  
  
She gives him a look over her shoulder, a tight-lipped smile, and leans back against him. Valerio seemingly takes this as an invitation to pull her closer, puts his other arm around her middle too, and rests his head on hers.  
  
It’s second nature to her, to be affectionate with him. And damn it, she’s at least tipsy, that’s a valid excuse, so she slides her hands up and wraps them around his forearms.  
  
Polo is sleeping a few feet away from them, and they haven’t talked about this, about them or whatever sort of relationship they plan on having in the future, but Lu is pretty drunk and Valerio is impulsive. It’s a great combination.  
  
His hand slides down, untucks her blouse from the skirt she’s wearing, and she turns around and smirks.  
  
“Aren’t you gonna buy me dinner first?”  
  
He shushes her, puts a finger to her lips.  
  
“Do I look like a gentleman to you?”  
  
Point taken.  
  
She kisses him first this time, tries not to rush things, but then he’s unbuttoning her skirt and his hands are all over her and suddenly all she wants to do is rush.  
  
He gets her off with his fingers, fast and quick, and she wants to scream his name but can’t. She bites his neck instead, and doesn’t realize she probably shouldn’t mark him like that until she’s slouched against him, trying not to trip on her unsteady legs.  
  
They both glance over at Polo, who is still sound asleep on the couch.  
  
Then, Valerio picks her up, her head hanging over his shoulder and she giggles quietly.  
  
He hums against her ribcage, starts walking upstairs. “If you’re not quiet, I’ll drop you.”  
  
They both know he won’t, but she’s not taking any chances. If Polo woke up right now, that would really suck.  
  
Once they get to his room, Valerio practically throws her on the bed, then goes to lock the door behind him.  
  
She can’t help but laugh at that. “That feels familiar,” she deadpans, and he shakes his head, laughs with her as he takes off his shirt.  
  
“What’s gotten into you?”  
  
She wiggles out of her skirt, unbuttons her blouse the rest of the way and shrugs it off.  
  
“Maybe I just missed you,” her voice is soft yet daring. He’s still standing at the end of the bed, taking off his pants now. “Can you hurry up?”  
  
“I forgot how bossy you get,” he retorts, grins at her when she rolls her eyes. She licks her lips at the sight of him.  
  
It’s a good thing Polo is a deep sleeper because the way she screams Valerio’s name as he drives into her is not subtle whatsoever.  
  
(Being careless has never felt so good, and Lu finds herself thinking that she might be done depriving herself of things she enjoys.)  
  
**  
  
The next morning, she wakes up before Val, which is rare. It seems doing less drugs has worked wonders for his sleep schedule — she’s a little proud.  
  
For the first time in her life, she wakes up next to him and the first thing she does isn’t panic or wonder how they ended up here. It feels freeing.  
  
She thinks about waking him up, about letting herself stay in bed a little bit longer to enjoy his body heat but then remembers Polo is downstairs and she should probably check on him.  
  
Dragging herself out of bed, she puts on a fluffy bathrobe, takes a quick, cold shower and walks downstairs. Polo is no longer on the couch, so she walks through the living room and into the kitchen.  
  
She’s surprised, to say the least, to find him in there whisking something — she thinks it might be whipped cream — while a huge stack of pancakes sits on a plate on the counter. There’s a pan in the sink and he’s cut up some fruit as well. It’s kind of adorable, watching him sing along to some Rihanna song blaring from his phone. Lu stands in the door and takes him in, waits for him to look up and notice her. When he does, he grins at her, raises his hands like he’s been caught.  
  
“You don’t look hungover,” she prods, stealing a strawberry from the bowl he holds out to her. “Are you sure you’re the same guy I saw doing several vodka shots in a row last night to prove a point?”  
  
At this, he smiles. “Bouncing back is one of my many talents,” he whips out three plates from one of the cupboards, sets them on the dining table and Lu is struck by how comfortable it feels. She has no idea what compelled him to waltz in here and make them breakfast — but hey, she’s not complaining.  
  
“I didn’t know you could cook,” she muses, plucks another strawberry out of the bowl.  
  
“One of my nannies growing up was very insistent that knowing how to make pancakes was an important life skill,” he carries the stack of pancakes over to the table and steals the bowl of fruit from her as well. “And it’s a really good way to show off, too.” 

Lu shakes her head and laughs. “Let me get Val.”  
  
They have breakfast together, her in her fluffy pink bathrobe with a towel on her head, Val shirtless in just a pair of sweats and Polo, the most awake and put together of them all and it feels… nice. Comfortable, almost domestic.  
  
Lu catches herself thinking Polo might not be the worst company to keep and immediately wonders if she’s gone insane.  
  
**  
  
Valerio convinces them it’s a great idea to take a day trip to the country club Polo’s moms are members of and when Lu points out neither of them knows how to play golf, he rolls his eyes dramatically.  
  
“That’s why we need to learn, stupid,” he’s already in full golf gear, or at least his interpretation of what one might wear to work on their handicap. The Adidas visor looks comical perched on top of his unruly curls.  
  
Sighing, Lu retreats to her room and puts on a beige skirt and a pink Ralph Lauren polo shirt — the closest she will ever get to looking like she fits in on a golf range.  
  
They meet Polo outside of the country club grounds and watch in fascination as he smooth-talks the receptionist into letting them come along despite their non-member status.  
  
As it turns out, Polo has actually played golf before, so he gives them some pointers and tries not to laugh at them too much as they completely butcher their first few attempts. When Lu misses the ball completely, he cocks a brow at her and chuckles.  
  
“You do realize you have to actually hit the ball in order to call it _playing_ golf, right?”  
  
“Wow, thank you so much Polo, I hadn’t thought of that at all,” she retorts, hands over the golf club to him and gives him a look. “Show us how it’s done, then.”  
  
She expects him to slip and mess up, but instead he swings the golf club expertly and watches as the ball flies across the green with precision.  
  
“Oh dear, you shouldn’t have done that,” Valerio mutters and she glares at him. “Lu is a really sore loser.”  
  
Instead of replying, she shoves his shoulder so hard, he flies into the little wall separating them from the golfers next to them. He puts his arms up in mock surrender and she rolls her eyes, but can’t quite keep the smile off her face.  
  
If nothing else, their attempts at golfing make for amusing Instagram story posts.  
  
Later, they’re lounging in the country club jacuzzi, recovering from a long day of sucking at golf, and as she sips from her champagne flute and looks at the boys across from her, she feels oddly content.  
  
Carla texts her, asks her what she’s up to and when Lu attaches a picture of the boys posing in the warm water, she hesitates before sending it. She doesn’t want to feed into Carla’s threesome theory, but it is a really nice picture so she hits send and puts her phone away.  
  
It’s not her fault her friend isn’t capable of being around attractive men without wanting to sleep with them, alright? She’d never go there. (She thinks.)  
  
**  
  
“This is the worst idea in the world.”  
  
They’re sitting outside in the grass, on makeshift seats made out of stacked blankets, as Valerio tries in vain to light a fire in the fire pit he’d attempted to set up.  
  
All the worst ideas are always his so of course the idea to camp out in the backyard came from him, too. It makes literally zero sense, seeing as they’re only a few steps away from their house, but he’d insisted on setting up the tent, getting a little fire pit going and had spent most of the day shopping for supplies. Boredom makes people do weird things.  
  
Polo is next to her, wearing the most casual outfit she’s ever seen him in, sweatpants hanging low on his hips. He hands her a bottle of beer and she looks at him in disbelief, as if the mere suggestion of her drinking beer is offensive.  
  
“You might like it,” he says, clinks his bottle against hers and watches her face expectantly.  
  
She takes a sip and finds she doesn’t actually hate it, but she can’t give him that satisfaction so she still makes a face.  
  
Before she can comment on the beer further, Valerio makes a triumphant noise and a tiny flame crackles in the pit in front of them. It’s summer in Madrid, where nights are never particularly cool, but Valerio had insisted lighting a bonfire was part of the ‘ _outdoor adventure experience’.  
  
_ He has a real talent for getting others to go along with whatever silly thing he comes up with, exudes careless reckless abandon, and a part of Lu loves to let him call the shots. The outcome is always unexpected, never quite according to plan, but typically pretty fun anyway.  
  
Polo tries, in vain, to start a game of Never Have I Ever. When he can’t think of anything he hasn’t done, he decides to change the rules, declares that you can say something you have done, as long as you drink, too.  
  
“That’s so not the point of the game, Polo,” Lu rolls her eyes, takes a sip of the beer she’s starting to like. “Here, let me start. Never have I ever done drugs!”  
  
Valerio drinks and gives her a look when she doesn’t. “Lu, if you’re gonna lie, then what’s the point of playing at all?” She throws a stick at him, chugs the rest of her beer and smiles when Polo instantly opens another one for her.  
  
The game long forgotten in between jokes and laughter, Polo looks at the two of them and furrows his brow. “So when’s your father getting back?”  
  
If she’s being honest, Lu had successfully ignored the fact that her father is still a living, breathing person until now. Valerio gives her a look, stares off into the distance, so it seems it’s up to her to answer.  
  
“He’s usually gone until early September,” she says, trying for nonchalant. She kinda wishes she was drinking something stronger than beer. “Hopefully I’ll be gone by the time he gets back.”  
  
Polo just nods, short, and takes a sip of his beer. He doesn’t ask any follow-up question, doesn’t even ask what her plans for next year are, and she appreciates it. Living in the now isn’t normally something Lu does much of, but she’s been trying her hand at it this summer and she’s liking it.  
  
Later, when they finally move into the tent, it’s a tight fit. It’s probably worse for the boys who are significantly taller than her, but they still crowd into it with her once they get tired of making s’mores and drinking by the fire.  
  
She somehow ends up in the middle, her leg thrown over Val’s as she lies on her side. She can feel Polo hesitate before he puts an arm around her, and she subconsciously pulls him closer.  
  
It’s perfectly innocent, really. They sleep until the sun wakes them up at dawn, sunlight streaming into the tent. Valerio curses, says, “Camping fucking sucks,” and they hurry up to his room instead for another nap.  
  
It’s not the worst way she’s ever spent a summer night.  
  
(It’s also not the worst way to wake up, having them on either side of her, but she ignores that part.)  
  
**  
  
She sends in her admissions paperwork to UCL in early August and wires the first tuition payment. While applying, she’d considered student loans, but when she turned eighteen in June and conveniently found out that her father couldn’t actually keep her from accessing the trust fund her grandparents had set up in her name, that no longer mattered.  
  
It’s not an obscene amount of money, but it’s enough to pay for her education and a comfortable lifestyle in a city as expensive as London. It’s more than good enough for her.  
  
Lu thinks she’ll be just fine, financially.  
  
She tells Carla over dinner later that day, kind of giddy with the excitement of it all. Of course, Carla is equally thrilled because she loves London, tells her she’ll visit her as soon as she can. She’s headed to Paris, and Lu grins at her as they toast to new beginnings.  
  
**  
  
She’s at Polo’s house, and it’s just them, which should feel weird but doesn’t. Valerio has decided to go on a ten-day yoga retreat on the Costa del Sol — no, really, she wishes she was kidding — and she’s pretty sure when he told her to keep Polo company, he didn’t mean _this_.  
  
Not that they’re doing anything scandalous, but his mothers are out of town on business, and it’s late at night, and okay, maybe she didn’t bring a bathing suit to avoid a situation where they end up in the pool together, tipsy and turned on. Unfortunately, she forgot that tipsy Lu doesn’t care about such silly details, and now they’re in the pool, in their underwear, and he’s floating very, very close to her.  
  
When he splashes her and smiles, in the genuine way she’s only gotten to see on him recently, she pulls on his arm and tries to get him to sink.  
  
He races her to the deep end of the pool, playfully rolls his eyes when she gets there first. (She’s very, very competitive — no amount of wine will change that.)  
  
Of course, she teases him, and of course he dunks her under. She comes back up and pushes at his chest, laughing.  
  
Polo is a lot of fun, when you actually get to know him — she likes the version of him that cracks jokes that are completely inappropriate, who doesn’t give a fuck about social etiquette or what people think of him. Years of going to school with him, of hanging out with him by proxy because her best friend was his girlfriend, and she never got to see this side of him. In hindsight, she thinks she may have been missing out. He’s pretty cool.  
  
"Can you keep a secret?" That seems like a loaded question. She nods, anyway.  
  
They’re leaning against the edge of the pool, holding on with their elbows. He avoids eye contact for a moment, licks his lips and stares straight ahead.  
  
“When I first met you, I kind of had a crush on you,” he hesitates, runs a hand through his hair. It’s kind of endearing to see him get a little nervous. “If you ever tell Carla I said that, I’ll deny it.”  
  
At this, Lu has to laugh, messing up his wet hair with her hands. “You were thirteen, and I _was_ pretty cute,” she muses. God, she feels tipsy, and giddy, and he’s right there, complimenting her and they’re both very scantily clad and-- he’s… tempting.  
  
“You still are,” is all he says, and then he’s got his hand in her hair, and she can’t say she minds when he leans in and kisses her. It’s cautious, almost gentle, but then she opens her mouth for him and suddenly he’s got her pressed against the wall of the pool, his hands trailing down her sides, inching lower.  
  
“Polo—“ she tries, but he just leans back in, bites a path down her neck and she can’t help but gasp. “Polo, what about Val?”  
  
At this, he chuckles, bites down on her collarbone to make a point. God, it’s hot how confident he’s being. “We’re not exclusive, if that’s what you’re asking,” which, yeah, she kind of was but that doesn’t make this any less wrong. “I’m pretty sure he’s fucking some yoga obsessed hippie as we speak, actually.”  
  
Lu considers this, thinks it’s probably true. Still, she wants to set things straight before they go any further.  
  
“Listen,” she pushes him away just slightly, her hand on his (admittedly very toned) chest. “If you tell him about this, I will end you.”  
  
“Jesus, scary and threatening is a good look on you,” he looks like he can keep a secret — has covered up a murder more or less successfully before — so when he nods, bites at her earlobe and whispers “No one will find out,” she believes him.  
  
Her summer has been really, really good so far. It’s a welcome change after the fucked up year she’s had.  
  
**  
  
“Hey, do you mind if Polo joins us tonight?”  
  
Carla looks up from the magazine she’s browsing as they get dressed for yet another party and glances over at her, contemplative.  
  
“So are you and Polo, like, friends now?”  
  
Lu walks out of her closet, wearing just a purple lace bra and matching panties, steps into a pair of denim shorts as she looks up at Carla. She doesn’t know what to tell her. Admittedly, the boys have been very careless in sharing footage of the three of them hanging out on social media, so it’s not like Carla’s question is completely surprising.  
  
“I guess?”  
  
Carla doesn’t look satisfied with that answer. “You’ve spent a lot of time with him lately...”  
  
Ugh. She can see where this is going. She shrugs nonchalantly and looks at herself in the mirror.  
  
“Val is still at his hippie retreat, I’m just trying to be nice,” she mutters, then takes off the shirt she tried on. She settles on a simple black top, and when she pulls it on Carla nods her approval. “Why, are you jealous?”  
  
The laughing reply the blonde lets out is instant and loud.  
  
“No thanks, he’s all yours,” she walks over to the vanity, picks up a pair of earrings. “And Valerio’s,” she adds, and Lu smacks her shoulder.  
  
“How is Samuel, anyway?” Lu asks, smirks at Carla and knows she’s shut her up with that.  
  
The party is decent, even if she doesn’t think it’s completely her style. It’s at an outdoor venue which is going for a beach vibe, complete with a fake sandy beach area where people are lounging on deck chairs.  
  
As the sun sets, strobe lights come on and they pick up glow sticks, put on some neon face paint and it’s-- pretty fun, actually. When Carla complains about her hair getting stuck on the paint, Lu braids it for her and takes a bunch of pictures because she looks badass.  
  
Polo is absolutely loving it, twirls them around and goes a little crazier with each tequila shot he takes.  
  
They dance, and drink, and dance some more and it isn’t awkward, even when she leaves Polo alone with Carla for a bit to get them another round.  
  
The three of them are pretty drunk (she may need to tackle her budding problem with alcoholism soon) and Lu giggles as she puts an arm around Polo.  
  
“Val would love this,” she leans towards him, gets out her phone and holds it up for a picture. It’s not a great selfie, but they’re both clearly cracking up and having a blast, so she sends it to Val anyway, just adds a bunch of exclamation points as a caption.  
  
He hasn’t been checking his phone much, probably to focus on his chakra or whatever other yogi nonsense he’s been studying, but his reply is still instant, a picture of him doing a yoga pose on the beach. He’s naked and the shot is artistic, almost tasteful, his back to the camera as he faces the water. Polo looks at her phone over her shoulder and laughs.  
  
“He’s fucking shameless,” he whispers over the music, and she nods, but notices how his gaze lingers on the picture. She can’t quite look away either, so she can’t blame him.  
  
Carla comes back over, tired of dancing with random strangers, and grabs her arm roughly to get her attention. “Less texting, more dancing,” to this Lu nods resolutely, puts her phone away and takes the blonde’s hand. “Polo, get us a drink, will you?”  
  
He gives them a mock salute and heads for the bar.  
  
Carla holds her at arm's length and looks at her like she’s trying to read her, or something. Seemingly finding what she’s looking for, she scoffs and laughs. “You’re totally sleeping with him.”  
  
Lu considers lying to her, but figures it’s pointless so she purses her lips and nods her head just slightly. Carla starts laughing in earnest, gives her a hug and keeps talking, clearly loving this. “That’s so fucked up! Does Valerio know?”  
  
Lu shakes her head. She’s glad the lights at the party are hiding the blush that creeps up her cheeks.  
  
At the end of the night, the three of them share a cab home. Carla gets out first, somehow has the drunken decency not to comment on the way Polo’s hand is clearly grabbing Lu’s knee and Lu can’t help but bury her head against his neck and laugh when the door closes.  
  
They go back to hers, because he claims his promiscuity is of great concern to his mothers. She doesn’t call him on that, was gonna suggest he stay over anyway, and nods. 

It doesn't matter who kisses whom. She grabs his shirt, but he presses her against the door. It's a fight, mostly, push and pull and who can make the other moan the loudest before clothes are even taken off. (He wins. Marginally.)  
  
**  
  
Valerio comes back from his retreat, somehow even more relaxed than usual and she laughs in his face when he doesn’t accept the glass of wine she pours for him and instead tells her it’s full of toxins that ruin your relationship with your body.  
  
Alcohol has only ever improved her relationship with her own body; has made her enjoy it the way it was meant to be enjoyed, so they disagree there.  
  
They stay in for the first two nights he’s back, watch all kinds of terrible Netflix movies and it feels nice to have him to herself for a while. She’s enjoying her newfound friendship with Polo as well, of course, but she’s missed this, too.  
  
It’s two in the morning and she’s half asleep, her head in his lap on the couch as the credits of some movie play. He runs a hand through her hair, then pokes her shoulder until she opens her eyes to look up at him.  
  
“Hey,” he brushes his hand down her arm.  
  
She smiles up at him lazily, yawns a little and grabs onto his arm, runs her hand down it to link her fingers with his. “Hey.”  
  
He looks lost in thought, and she contributes it to his unusual sobriety.  
  
“Where are you going to school,” he asks finally, doesn’t even really look at her while he utters the words. “London, right?”  
  
It doesn’t take an expert to guess he saw the UCL brochures in her room.  
  
She sits up, figures she should probably at least try to have a real conversation with him if he’s offering it up like this. “Yeah,” she smiles, almost shy. “Why?”  
  
“No reason,” his voice sounds off, and she wants to know why. “Just trying to figure out what I wanna do.”  
  
It’s not her place to tell him to come with her, and she doesn’t even know if that’s what she wants, so she stays quiet. They’ve talked enough.  
  
She kisses him slowly, languidly, lets herself enjoy the way the light stubble on his chin scratches against her face. He responds immediately, pulls her into his lap and brushes his nose against hers, teasing before he leans back in.  
  
A few minutes later, her shirt is off and he’s biting a path down her neck when he starts laughing.  
  
She groans, frustrated. This better be good. “What?”  
  
Valerio pulls back, looks her straight in the eye “I feel like London has it out for me,” he says, traces the seam of her lips with his thumb. She bites it and waits for him to clarify. “Polo is moving there too.”  
  
Oh. Well. That’s news to her.  
  
She can tell he’s watching her face for a reaction, and she’s not sure what to go for, so she just leans in to kiss him again, unbuttons his shirt and moans into his mouth when he grabs her hips.  
  
“It’s a big city,” she rasps.  
  
He pushes her away far enough to slip his arms out of his shirt. “Is it though?”  
  
“Yeah,” she says, even if it's totally not true and not really relevant. Chances are they’ll run into each other. “Val, please,” she’s pleading with him now, just wants time to process the information later. Her mouth is inches from his.  
  
He opens his mouth to speak and she shushes him, covers it with her hand. “Shut up or I’ll make you,” she says against his skin, then licks her lips and makes a pleased sound when he leans in to kiss her.  
  
When he’s asleep next to her later, she tries and fails to stop thinking about what moving to the same city might mean for her and Polo.  


**  
  
In the end, Lu decides to be proactive about it. Val is headed to Guzmán’s house (she didn’t ask and he didn’t elaborate, so there’s that) to play video games, and she’s got the house to herself.  
  
She hasn’t seen Polo in a few days, so she texts him a picture of the pool, just adds a question mark and smiles when he instantly tells her he’ll be over in twenty minutes.  
  
“Want some lemonade?” They’re in the kitchen, and she’s trying not to be awkward. Nothing has changed, except she now knows they’ll be in the same city for the next four years. (So, yeah, a lot has changed.)  
  
He looks at her like she’s grown a second head. “Is there vodka in it?”  
  
She rolls her eyes, takes a step towards the fridge. “And here I thought we were trying to be more responsible about the amount of alcohol we consume,” he’s next to her before she knows it, opens the fridge and gets out a bottle of Grey Goose.  
  
“Speak for yourself,” he pours some vodka into one of the glasses and raises an eyebrow at her. When she sighs and nods, he pours some for her as well. Sobriety is overrated.  
  
They move to the pool, and she sits down at the edge of it, dangling her legs in the water.  
  
He puts his drink down next to her, takes a step back and she doesn’t hide the way she ogles him as he takes off his t-shirt and pants. He’s got a pair of speedos underneath and cannonballs into the pool, splashing her in the process.  
  
Then, he resurfaces and grabs her legs, trying to pull her in with him.  
  
“Polo,” she screeches, tries to wiggle backward to escape his grasp but he’s stronger than her. “At least let me take off my dress first.”  
  
He holds up his hands in mock surrender, “Fine, you do that,” and watches her as she reaches for the hem of her short summer dress. The second she pulls it over her head, she feels him pull her into the water and decides to let him.  
  
She pops her head out of the water and pushes at his shoulder, and he crowds her against the nearby pool ladder. They’re both sober this time, but bizarrely she finds she still kind of likes the way he’s tracing his hand down the side of her body, sees his blue eyes staring right at her and wants to pull him closer.  
  
Her white bikini is clinging to her, and when he slips his hand between them, she’s glad she didn’t go for a one-piece today. Convenience is key.  
  
She’s suddenly really not in the mood for talking, but she wants to get this over with.  
  
“By the way,” she tries for a casual tone and wants to cringe at how awkward it comes out. “Val told me you’re moving to London.”  
  
Polo doesn’t seem to think anything of the subject, just nods his head. “Yeah, I’m gonna major in film studies at King’s College like some rich kid cliché.”  
  
That makes her laugh and his mouth hovers over hers, then slides against her lips; his teeth catch her lips too, running over the bottom one.  
  
“I’m gonna be in London too,” she says, on a breath and feels his grip on her hips tighten.  
  
The last thing she wants him to think is that she’s suggesting they should hang out more, or date, or anything like that. She just wants to put this whole awkward ‘ _oh BTW we’re gonna be in the same place_ ’ thing behind her and get back to hooking up with him on the down-low.  
  
“I guess I won’t delete your number after all, then,” he jokes, and she decides that’s good enough for her.  
  
She kisses him and kisses him hard. She likes the way that his mouth feels, all hot and flushed and completely unapologetic.  
  
It’s summer, she’s young, and she deserves to let loose. It doesn’t have to mean much.  
  
She thinks he gets that.  



	2. Chapter 2

August bleeds into September, and before Lu knows it, she’s looking at Carla over the rim of her wine glass, trying not to cry.  
  
They’re at one of the Caleruega family wineries in Galicia for the weekend, as sort of a last hurrah of the summer, and Carla leaves for Paris in two days. For the most part, they’ve strayed from that topic, have kept the mood light and fun. Now, though, after finishing off a second bottle of the excellent — no really, Lu hasn’t shut up about it for the entire duration of the night — white wine, a mix of anticipation and dread sets in.  
  
Carla looks contemplative, especially considering the amount of wine in her system, and Lu kind of wants to hug her. They’re sitting side by side on a bench out back overlooking the vineyard.  
  
“I just don’t know if leaving is the best idea right now,” she finally says, almost like a confession. They both know she’s leaving, but if she needs to get this off her chest, Lu is happy to listen and entertain this hypothetical. “Yeray isn’t gonna be able to manage the wineries full time, and things with Samuel are actually okay for once and-- I don’t know, I feel like things are going alright and I’m ruining it.”  
  
At this, Lu puts an arm around her and sighs. She can relate to that.  
  
“It’s not selfish to go after what you want, Carla,” she says, and maybe there’s a pep talk for herself in there somewhere, too. “You don’t have to settle for _alright_.”  
  
Carla nods, like she knows this but still can’t make herself feel it. “I’m so used to knowing what I _don’t_ want,” she rolls her eyes at herself, brushes her hair behind her ears. “And now I just can’t decide what it is that I actually want to do.”  
  
Lu hums in agreement.  
  
They’re quiet for a while, staring out at the vineyard, towards the lake down in the valley below them where the sun is just setting.  
  
“Did you know Polo is moving to London?”  
  
At this, Carla laughs hard. She pulls Lu close, squeezes her hip.  
  
“Oh Lu, you always know just how to cheer me up.”  
  
**  
  
There’s no tearful goodbyes, no airport sendoff, but Lu still feels weird the day Carla leaves. Not even because she misses her already (she does) but because this will be her soon — and while she’s excited for what London has in store for her, it seems a little daunting as well.  
  
Two more weeks.  
  
She gets to live like there’s no tomorrow for two more weeks and then it’s time to be an adult, to go to school, and make responsible choices.  
  
A part of her wonders if she’s ready for this step.  
  
An even bigger part of her wonders how she’ll cope without having both Val and Polo at her disposal, ready to shower her with attention the second she asks for it. She’s spoiled and she would like to keep it that way.  
  
She really, really doesn’t want her perfect summer to end.  
  
**  
  
It’s all sort of an accident, the way it happens.  
  
She spends the night at Polo’s place because he’s never seen Gossip Girl, which she honestly thinks is a disgrace and wouldn’t shut up about until he promised her they’d binge at least one season. They don’t quite make it through the whole season in one day, fall asleep sometime between Serena’s love confession to Dan and Jenny’s new haircut, but pick up right where they left off in the morning.  
  
When they finish the season finale, Polo seems hooked enough to spend half an hour quizzing her on what happens next, so she thinks she’s succeeded in getting him into it. Totally worth wasting an entire day on.  
  
“They’re just all so mysterious and attractive,” is what he says, and she grins at him.  
  
It’s past lunchtime, and he has his maid make them a snack. Lu briefly wonders if she should have told Valerio about not coming home last night, but figures he would’ve called by now if he thought she was dead in a ditch somewhere.  
  
All of this is fine, of course. Then, his mothers get home from work, find them watching season two in the sitting room and invite her to stay for dinner.  
  
She looks over at Polo for some sort of signal, to make sure she’s not overstepping, and when he shrugs, she puts on her best future leader of tomorrow smile, says, “Sure, I’d love to,” and starts making small talk with them as they sit down at the dinner table.  
  
“It’s so great to see you, Lucrecia,” Begoña says and Andrea nods.  
  
Lu’s perfect daughter-in-law table manners are a little rusty, but she’s sure she wins them over when she references the award she knows Begoña’s publishing company won recently.  
  
“You know, we were so sorry to hear about you and Guzmán,” Andrea says, in between bites of salad, and Polo sighs.  
  
“Mom, come on,” he starts, but Lu interrupts him.  
  
“No, no — it’s totally fine. It was unfortunate but in the end, probably for the best,” she takes a sip of her wine to make her point. “With him staying here, and me moving away for school — well, it wouldn’t have worked.”  
  
Polo looks impressed, like he’s forgotten what she’s capable of, and she mentally adds reminding him that she’s a bad bitch who can talk her way out of literally anything to her to-do list for later.  
  
“And where will you be attending school this fall?”  
  
“University College London,” she says, and watches his moms closely as they come to the obvious conclusion. They clearly want to chime in, but don’t want to be rude and interrupt. “They have an excellent faculty of law.”  
  
“Oh, so you’ll both be in the same city,” Andrea smiles at Polo and he nods. “Isn’t that nice?”  
  
“Yeah, it’ll be great to have a friend around,” Polo replies, then goes back to eating his food. Lu wishes she had the luxury of letting other people have this conversation for her. Ugh. Male privilege.  
  
“Where will you be living?” Begoña points her fork at her like it’s a weapon. “Not in university housing, I hope…”  
  
Lu shakes her head no and smiles when the older woman visibly relaxes at that. “I actually haven’t decided yet.”  
  
She’s been looking at apartments on and off, but summer fun had sort of taken precedence. A hotel will do for the first few days, and really, she’d like the chance to go see places in person before making a decision.  
  
“Well, the place we bought for Polo has an extra bedroom, I’m sure you could stay with him while you look for something,” Andrea addresses Polo. “Right, honey?”  
  
It’s cruel for them to put him on the spot like that, but Polo doesn’t seem to mind, just smiles encouragingly. “It’s got a great view.”  
  
After dinner, his driver takes them to her house.  
  
“You know you can say no, right? I can find somewhere else—“ he rolls his eyes and waves a hand in front of her face to get her to stop talking.  
  
“Calm down, alright? Stay as long as you’d like,” he says and she searches in vain for any hint of uncertainty or sense of him offering out of politeness.  
  
Lu prides herself on being prideful. She’s not gonna ask again.  
  
Maybe having a familiar face around while she figures out a permanent solution really will be nice, anyway.  


The driver stops in front of her house and she grabs Polo’s hand and drags him inside. Valerio is in the living room when they walk in, and Lu can’t keep the smile off her face when he looks over at them and grins.  
  
“Val, I found this guy outside waiting for you, he claims you're friends…” at this, Val runs over, all giddy excitement, and she laughs when he hugs them both at once.  
  
He messes up Polo’s hair and shrugs when Polo tells him to stop. “How was Gossip Girl?”  
  
Lu is not a jealous person, per se, and isn’t allowed to be seeing as she’s sleeping with both of the men in the room without either of them knowing about the other, but it still makes alarm bells go off in her head when she realizes Polo must’ve told Val about their Netflix plans. Sometimes she forgets that they have a whole relationship outside of their group dynamic that she’s not a part of.  
  
“I’m still trying to decide what they all see in Chuck,” Polo muses, contemplative. “He kind of just looks like a kid playing dress up in eccentric scarves.”  
  
Valerio ushers them into the kitchen, then pours them each a glass of bourbon.  
  
“Always been more of a Carter Baizen guy myself,” he says, and Lu playfully rolls her eyes.  
  
Polo hasn’t really seen much of the character yet, so he’s just confused. “Who’s that?”  
  
_Oh_ , this is gold. “An older, rich, drugged up manwhore that gets disowned by his family,” Lu provokes, takes a sip of her drink and makes eye contact with Val. She loves a good old-fashioned petty provocation. “He’s basically Val, but a lot prettier.”  
  
A small pretend fight breaks out over that, complete with Valerio googling pictures and holding his phone up for Polo to compare. Lu picks up her drink, leaves the boys to it and heads up to her room for some me-time.  
  
As she walks away from them, she hears Polo say, “You’re totally prettier,” and doesn’t need to look to know they’re kissing. Weirdly, she doesn’t think she really cares.  
  
They can have each other as long as she can have them.  
  
**  


For a brief moment, Lu thinks her phone is broken when Carla’s mouth drops open in shock on FaceTime and doesn’t seem to want to close.  


“... You’re moving in with him?” 

She rolls her eyes. “Temporarily!”

“Right...”

Lu doesn’t appreciate the sarcasm in her voice. “Right.”  
  
Carla laughs, moves her phone a bit to change the camera angle. “I’m totally gonna come visit you just to see this trainwreck unfold.”  
  
With friends like these, who needs enemies?!  
  
Lu brushes off the teasing. “I need to get back to packing,” she says, and puts her phone down on her vanity, checks to make sure she’s still in the frame. “Tell me about Paris!”  
  
The call lasts almost three hours, and by the end of it, Lu thinks they might just make this long-distance friendship their bitch.

**

There’s a small goodbye party, and Polo plays host because his house is the biggest and his mothers offer. Lu takes over party planning, not that there’s much to plan, but she still comes over a few hours early and makes sure the bar is set up and well-stocked. They’re not having tons of people over, but she still wants this to be as perfect as possible — obscene amounts of alcohol should help with that.  
  
His moms have a caterer bring over some finger food, and dote on them as they get things set up.  
  
“They still feel guilty about the whole attempted suicide thing,” Polo tells her as they lounge on his bed, casually, like that’s a normal thing to say and laughs. She doesn’t appreciate his lack of seriousness, pushes at his chest.  
  
“That’s not fucking funny, dumbass,” she rolls her eyes and he grabs her hips, pulls her on top of him.  
  
Of course, Lu knows Polo is a little bit of a tortured soul. As far as she’s aware, he’s still in therapy, has been dealing with anxiety for most of his life, but she still doesn’t appreciate him joking around like that.  


When he leans in to kiss her, she puts a hand on his cheek and pushes him away. “Nope, people are gonna be here in,” she checks her phone for the time, “Twenty minutes.”

Sitting up, she looks over at him and sighs dramatically. “You might want to put on a shirt before people arrive.”

It really is a little over the top, Lu thinks, as she walks downstairs and outside over to where the food and drinks are set up.

Of course, it’s great to see everyone. Ander and Omar both look suspiciously tan, so she figures they’ve been on some sort of trip, and Lu makes them take shots with her the second they walk in, gives them a choice of tequila or vodka and nods her approval when they pick tequila.

She greets everyone arriving, offers them a drink, and feels in her element playing host. It’s Nadia who comments on it, later, as they’re sitting in a quiet corner catching up. She’s tipsy, which Lu has never gotten to witness before, and it’s really, really fun.

“So you and Polo,” she narrows her eyes, tries to be subtle. Lu kind of hates how perceptive she is — she’s barely interacted with Polo so far tonight, but she can tell Nadia has convinced herself something is going on. “You’re both going to London, and you’re at his house acting all... hostess-y...” Lu laughs it off, rolls her eyes at Nadia good-naturedly.

“Not you too,” she sighs, takes a sip of her drink. “Why is it so hard for people to believe I’m happily single?”

“Maybe because you’re... _you_?” The girl deadpans, and they both laugh when Lu gasps mockingly. She resents the accusation, quite frankly.

Deciding to change the subject, she questions Nadia about New York instead, tells her she’ll try to visit and they both smile. It’s bittersweet to think all of these people who she’s taken for granted for so long will soon be living all over the globe.

Rebeka starts a game of Never Have I Ever, which they all begrudgingly go along with, and when she says “Never have I ever had sex with someone in Polo’s house,” Lu drinks and avoids looking at Polo. Only her, Valerio and Polo drink, and she can tell the others are all looking at her, trying to figure out when she would’ve had the opportunity. Luckily, Guzmán looks pensive, then over at her, says “Oh, that’s right,” and grins as he chugs the rest of his drink. What can she say? She’s always loved a good party hookup.

She’s chatting with Polo later when Guzmán comes up to them and grabs them both by the shoulder, putting an arm around each of them. “Look at you two! Off to London! What are the odds?” He’s clearly had a few too many drinks, so his words come out slurred. 

Polo gives her a sheepish look, nods for her to take this one. “Well, it’s a pretty big city,” she teases, and looks right at Polo. “Who knows if we’ll even see each other.” 

They’ve agreed not to tell people about the whole living together thing, for now, just to avoid any snarky remarks.

Guzmán laughs. “No, no, no,” he squeezes her shoulder, gives her a drunk, concerned look. “You have to watch out for each other! Promise me you will!”

She’s always had a soft spot for drunk Guzmán — no one is more caring. He’s kind of adorable. 

“You’ll have to come visit then, since Lu doesn’t want to look out for me,” Polo pouts, trying not to laugh, and when Guzmán just solemnly nods, they both crack up.

She catches Valerio watching them from across the patio, clearly only half paying attention to his chat with Rebeka and she smiles, raises her glass until he mimics toasting her.

Excusing herself from the conversation with Guzmán and Polo, she gives Valerio a look and walks inside, towards the kitchen. She hears the door open and close behind her a few seconds later and rolls her eyes at his impatience. He could’ve at least waited a little longer to make it less obvious he’s following her.  
  
She’s leaning against the kitchen counter when he walks in, a small grin on his face. The only reason she even came in here is _this,_ that infuriating little grin of his and she blames the multiple rounds of tequila shots.  
  
“You’ve been avoiding me,” she whispers as he crowds her against the counter and, god, this is a really, really terrible idea. She’s made it through the past four years of hiding their fling from (most of) her classmates, there’s no point in getting caught now. “Are you gonna take Rebeka home tonight?” She plays with his shirt, trying for coy, and hopes her pointless attempt at provocation is working.  
  
But Valerio doesn’t bristle, just shrugs and gives Lu that hint of an up-to-no-good smirk he knows she finds infuriating.  
  
“Probably not,” he says, and he still hasn’t kissed her, which is rude, frankly. “Unless you have other plans.”

There’s a hint of something in that statement that makes her ears perk up, like he might know more about her and Polo than she thought, but she’s too drunk and distracted to really pay it any mind. 

Her head spins (maybe from the alcohol, maybe not) as his warm, large fingers find the softness of her hip. Jesus fucking Christ.

He kisses her, brief and intense, then instantly pushes her away, just says, “Later,” and walks out the door. It sounds like a threat he intends to make good on.  
  
It takes her several minutes to regain her composure and walk back out. Nadia grabs her arm, pulls her into a conversation with Rebeka, and the girl has to nudge her when she zones out and completely misses a question that was directed at her.  
  
Valerio has the audacity to butt into the conversation, slotting himself in between her and Rebeka, and when he casually puts his arm around her and plays with the belt loops of her jeans, she’d love to swat his hand away but can’t. Nadia gives her a brief pointed look, but she ignores her.  
  
She makes an off-handed mean spirited comment, mainly because she feels like that’s her role to play within this group of people, and Rebeka playfully shoots her down.  
  
Rebeka looks at Valerio and laughs. “Aren’t you gonna miss having her around?”  
  
Val doesn’t miss a beat, just pulls her closer and slips his hand under her shirt at her back, and when he says, “I think she’ll miss me more,” she fights the urge to push back against his hand. Instead, she rolls her eyes and hopes it’s convincing.  
  
God, she needs a drink. “I need a drink,” she says, voice tense, and brushes Val’s hand off. “Anyone else?”  
  
Nadia follows her over to the little makeshift bar set up, glances at her suggestively like she’s scandalized as she pours herself a gin and tonic, and Lu suddenly remembers that Nadia knows about her and Val. Oops. She’d sort of forced herself to forget about that.  
  
“Oh, don’t give me that look, Judgy McJudgerson,” she mutters, and Nadia laughs despite herself. She sees Polo walk towards them, and tells Nadia to go ahead as she fixes him a drink.  
  
It’s getting late, and everyone has had a very generous amount of alcohol at this point, so she’s pretty confident no one really cares or notices when Polo takes the drink from her hand and then holds on to her wrist for a little while longer, just drawing circles on it with his thumb.

“Pretty fun party you threw,” he says, and she nods, even cracks a little smile. It’s pretty cool to see all of her people — she’s not sure friends is the right word — having fun together one last time.  
  
The shitty part about having hot, secret summer flings with people is that you can’t just make out with them at parties when you’re drunk. Hiding this from everyone had definitely been part of the fun, but right now drunk Lu is just annoyed that she’s feeling needy and there’s a hot, willing, consenting male in front of her and she can’t even think about going there.  
  
Polo seems to catch on to the flicker of want in her eyes, lowers his voice as he asks her if she’s staying over later. Lu considers this, but Val had kind of called dibs on her for the night (she hates herself for even _thinking_ about it in those terms) so she shakes her head no.  
  
She’s getting increasingly tired of having to choose. She just wants them both, all the time.  
  
“Guzmán seemed pretty depressed about you leaving,” she says instead, taking an easy out. It’s not exactly a lie. “Maybe you two should have a sleepover instead,” because she knows they actually used to do that, not because she’s looking for an excuse not to spend the night. She knows they’re still sort of working on rebuilding their relationship, after the whole Marina thing, so she convinces herself she might actually be doing him a favor here.  
  
He smiles at her, sort of soft and genuine, and she’s a little overwhelmed when she drunkenly realizes she cares about his emotional wellbeing. _Fuck_ , she thinks, _when did that happen?_  
  
At the end of the night, the goodbyes take at least twenty minutes. It’s an endless group hug, paired with drunk love proclamations and promises of visits that might never happen.  
  
She really, really hates goodbyes. Especially when they threaten to ruin her happy, drunk state of mind.  
  
She definitely doesn’t hate the way Valerio puts a hand on her thigh the second they get in the back of the cab taking them home. Then, he leans over, and whispers something so dirty in her ear, she considers telling their driver to hurry up.  
  
Her attempt to kiss him is shot down when he slides back over in the back seat, removing himself from her personal space entirely.  
  
“Not yet,” he says, and she may just die, she thinks.  


**

She’s got three more days until her flight, and Polo is leaving tomorrow. The three of them are in her living room, all sufficiently drunk, and there’s nothing awkward or weird about the way Valerio runs his hands through her hair as her head rests in his lap, while Polo slowly runs his fingers up and down her calves, her legs stretched out over his. She’s gonna miss this casual dynamic they’ve got going on — she loves all the attention.

Usually, she’d bow out now, let the boys say goodbye in private, but that last glass of wine is hitting her and their touch feels way, way too good for her to give up.

Maybe this is what Carla was talking about when she told her four hands are better than two.

She closes her eyes a little and can’t help the little moan that escapes her lips when Valerio’s hand moves from her hair to her shoulder, drawing circles on it. Polo’s fingers move higher, touching her knee, and Lu is pretty sure there’s absolutely no way she can remove herself from this situation. Not when it makes her feel this good.

“We should take her upstairs,” she hears Polo say, and her brain must be malfunctioning because it sounds far away. “She’s totally gonna fall asleep on us.”

Valerio laughs, but it’s not a genuine laugh. He knows her better than anyone, and must be able to tell she isn’t really tired. She’s turned on. He still carefully holds her head up as he scoots out from under her, then grabs her and hoists her up into his arms, bridal style.

“Give me a minute,” she hears him say to Polo, and then he’s walking upstairs with her. She keeps her eyes closed in a futile effort to pretend to be asleep but the second they cross the threshold to her room, he lets her down, chuckles when she sways on unsteady legs, her hands clinging to his shirt.

She can’t help it, honestly. Her hands move to his shoulders, and she leans in to kiss him, moans into his mouth when he tightens his grip on her hips.

Unfortunately, he has other plans. He pulls away, doesn’t budge when she tries to pull him closer again. “We can’t,” he says quietly, and there’s no subtext or hesitation in his words. He’s being level headed and she hates him for it.

Leaning in to kiss his neck, she bites down and smirks when he grabs her hair and pulls, hard. “We could...”

Valerio laughs, shakes his head slightly. “Even I know that’s a bad idea,” he murmurs, and pecks her lips. She seizes the opportunity, bites down on his bottom lip and smiles into the kiss when he relents and opens his mouth for her. 

Then, things sort of take a turn. She opens her eyes briefly, looks past Valerio over his shoulder and sees Polo standing out in the hall, eyes so dark they could pass for black. He doesn’t look away, doesn’t flinch when their eyes meet. So there’s that, too. 

Lu has always had a thing for hookups where someone could walk in any minute, loves the adrenaline of almost getting caught — she’s had close calls in school showers, in friends’ pools or tucked away in quiet hallways at parties. None of those compare to the rush of heat she feels low in her stomach when she feels Polo’s eyes on her as Valerio reaches for the zipper on her skirt. She bites her lip and can’t quite get herself to look away from him.

A part of her wants to see how far she can take this without Valerio noticing, but Polo is leaving tomorrow, and she really, really doesn’t want to complicate things further.

Breaking away from Valerio, she walks over to her bed instead, lets herself fall back on it and sighs dramatically. “I’m tired,” she says, and closes her eyes.  
  
He laughs, then walks off and mutters “Goodnight, Lu,” as he switches the light off and closes the door behind him.  
  
Next door, she hears the boys talk briefly, but can’t make out what they’re saying. She tries not to listen as their voices become more muffled, then turn into moans.  
  
She wonders if they know she’s listening, and if they like it as much as she does.  


Polo is gone before she wakes up the next morning. In the evening, he texts her a picture of the view from his (their) new living room and she doesn’t show Val. 

**  
  
The next two days are a blur of more packing, helping Valerio sort through all of his old things and labeling the two boxes she decides to send over to London on top of the suitcase she’s traveling with. 

Valerio is planning on leaving his things at Rebeka’s, he tells her excitedly, and will then take off on a road trip across Europe. She knew he wasn’t planning on going to university, and figures he must have some trust fund money somewhere, too, if this is what he’s settled on doing. 

A part of her envies him for taking the more unconventional route to happiness, but then she also knows she’s ambitious in a way he isn’t and would never forgive herself for missing out on a top-notch education and a stellar career. So she tells him to text her when he makes it to London eventually — they both know it’s only a matter of time — and wonders what sort of adventures and experiences he’ll have on this trip that she’ll miss out on.  
  
Neither of them mentions that a part of the reason he’s leaving tomorrow is the imminent return of their father.

Getting drunk the night before a move is kind of ill-advised, so she doesn’t, instead cutting herself off after two glasses of wine. Val jokingly suggests they get high instead, but she’s feeling weird enough without adding drugs into the mix.

He spends at least an hour — or maybe more, god, she loses track of time completely — biting a path down her body, marking her up. 

“Something to remember me by,” he growls into her ear, voice raw, and the implication is right there. Something to remember him by, and a reminder for anyone else that might see her like this.

They don’t talk about feelings, don’t let themselves get sentimental, but his eyes are unwavering as he makes her scream his name over and over again.

“Mine,” he finally growls, voice low, and she doesn’t know if he means to say it. Hearing it only makes her cling to him tighter, makes her go a little crazy with want and need. Of course she’s his.

There’s no confession, no fanfare, no unravel of secrets — although, she’s sure, she’s very sure that they’re there.

In the morning, she sneaks out of his room, just leaves him in there sleeping peacefully and forces herself not to look back.

She calls Carla from the airport, trying for a casual tone even though she feels kind of weird. 

She’s not nervous, which is odd, and she keeps waiting for it, for that moment to come and sort of take over her and how she’s supposed to really feel.

Carla laughs at her on the phone when she tells her this. “You’re scared,” she says, and Lu immediately wants to deny it, but maybe there really is no point.

“Maybe,” she sighs.

“How did you leave things with Valerio?” 

“I didn’t,” she says quickly, and feels a little guilty. “I just sort of snuck out and left him there,” it sounds worse than she thought, to say it out loud. 

Carla doesn’t make a joke like she was hoping she would. “Yikes,” she says instead and Lu feels defensive.

“What was I supposed to do, let him drive me to the airport and kiss him goodbye?” 

There’s an announcement at her gate and she sees people getting up to board.

“I gotta go,” she says into the phone. “Text me later!”

The turbulence on the flight over is bad, but Lu figures she deserves it. Karma, or some shit like that.

**  
  
Polo is, for lack of a better term, a gentleman by default. So even though she repeatedly told him not to pick her up from the airport, he’s still standing at arrivals, waiting for her, and she’s not even a little surprised to see him there. He’s in a t-shirt and jeans (still an odd sight to see) and looks so comfortable like that, she thinks she could get used to this version of him.  
  
They hug, and she launches into a tirade about the horrible turbulence on the flight over, talks his ear off until they’ve slid into the back of a taxi and the initial awkwardness of seeing him is gone.  
  
“I have a surprise for you,” he says, and she perks up at that, immediately tries to get him to tell her what it is. Lu is absolutely horrible at surprises because she can’t take the uncertainty of not knowing. It’s probably her biggest weakness.  
  
“Just tell me and I’ll shut up!”  
  
The drive to the apartment takes almost an hour, and the sun is just about to set when they get there. The place is, honestly, absolutely ridiculous. She’s been around the filthy rich all her life, has never hurt for money herself, but she still can’t help but gasp when she sees the place. She shouldn’t have expected any less from his mothers — they love to go overboard.  
  
She’d googled the location, of course, but it still feels a little over the top when they take the elevator up to the twelfth floor and she’s greeted by floor to ceiling windows and a view of the London skyline, with St. Paul’s across the river looking so close, she thinks she could touch it if she just reached a hand through the window.  
  
He shows her to her room, and she likes the neutral decor, mostly beige with some cream accents.  
  
There’s a present sitting on the bed, a neatly wrapped box (neat enough, she knows he didn’t wrap it himself) and she gives him a look as she impatiently walks towards it.  
  
“It’s really more of a joke,” he says from where he’s leaning against the doorframe, suddenly a little self-conscious and for some reason, she really, really likes when he gets nervous around her.  
  
When she finally tears through the wrapping paper and opens the box, she finds a burgundy King’s College hoodie inside, complete with the school crest. It’s definitely oversized, and she instantly loves the way the smooth cotton blend feels against her fingers, cool and comfortable.  
  
She hasn’t even set foot into a classroom at UCL yet, but she already knows there’s no way she’s ever wearing this out. King’s and UCL have an infamous rivalry, so she scoffs, tries to look offended but still cracks a smile.  
  
“If you think I’m ever gonna put this on, you’re crazy,” she throws the hoodie at him and he catches it, then walks towards where she’s sitting on the bed.  
  
“I think you’d look pretty great in red,” he sits down behind her and holds the hoodie up to her chest, his arms around her. She makes an annoyed sound, but instantly relaxes back into his touch.  
  
“It’s not red, it’s burgundy,” she corrects, and he laughs. “Or maybe maroon.”  
  
“Nah,” he pulls her closer, drops the hoodie into her lap. “It’s red.”  
  
“Crimson,” she counters, letting the hoodie fall to the floor. She turns in his arms, pushes him backward until he’s leaning against the pillows and straddles him. “Scarlet.”  
  
“It’s clearly just red,” he teases, grinning when she groans and rolls her eyes.  
  
“Could also pass for wine, or berry maybe,” she muses, and he laughs.  
  
His hands find her hips, and she leans forward, about to kiss him when he says, “Those aren’t even real names for colors, you have _got_ to be making these up,” and she sighs.  
  
“For the love of god, can you please just accept that I’m right so we can move on?”  
  
She kisses him softly, despite the fact that she remembers she’s supposed to be pissed.   
  
Pulling away, she tugs at the bottom of his shirt. “Off. Now.”  
  
Polo shakes his head at her, like he can’t quite believe she’s real, but still pulls the shirt over his head with ease. “Someone’s feeling bossy,” he whispers against her neck, and she tugs him up.  
  
“I _am_ bossy,” she corrects, then kisses him hard enough to shut him up once and for all.  
  
(If he notices the prominent bite marks on her breasts and the inside of her thighs, he doesn't comment on it. He traces the mark Valerio left on her neck with his tongue, then bites down on her collarbone next to it to add his own.)  
  
She ends up wearing the stupid hoodie and little else later that night because she doesn’t have anything else unpacked, and when he comes back from picking up their food delivery to see her in it, he looks smug.  
  
“Just pass me the food,” she says, because she’s starving.  
  
He takes a picture of her like that, holding a carton of Chinese food as she sits in the large armchair overlooking the nighttime skyline and she feels a giddy sense of excitement for what’s to come.  
  
It’s a really, really nice picture. She wishes she looked less like she’s just spent an extended period of time on her knees with someone's hands in her hair ( _oops_ ) so she could post it to Instagram. Instead, she sends it to Carla, even if she knows it’ll result in more teasing.  
  
Polo looks over at her, his mouth full of chow mein. “Can I send this to Val?” It takes her a moment to realize he’s used the nickname that’s only ever been hers to say. But it sounds right, coming from Polo, so she just nods.  
  
“One of us should definitely text him every day to make sure he’s still alive,” she muses, munching on a spring roll.  
  
She briefly flashes back to Polo’s last night in Madrid, the way he’d held her gaze as he watched Val’s hands on her, and she fights the urge to ask him about that.  
  
Some things are better left unsaid.  
  
**  
  
They spend the next five days shopping for essentials, taking long walks in their new neighborhood and (reluctantly) discovering the joys of public transport. London traffic is a drag — Lu knows Ubering everywhere won’t actually get her anywhere on time.  
  
She really, really loves Bankside already. It’s got a great mix of old and new, and there are all these cute little restaurants around. On her second day in the city, they find this hole in the wall Italian place five minutes from the apartment, and when she closes her lips around a spoonful of tiramisu, she thinks she might be in love.  
  
Then there’s the Tate Modern, not that Lu has ever been particularly interested in art, but the building itself has such a brutalist charm, she feels drawn to it. They check out some of the exhibits one day, then walk all the way up to the little viewing platform and Polo laughs when he realizes they can sort of see their living room window front from it.  
  
Every day, she calls Valerio late at night, asks him where he’s made it to that day and what he’s seen on the way. He’s in Bilbao, tells her all about the glorious Basque wine he’s been drinking. When she asks where he’s off to next, he never gives her a straight answer, and sometimes he’ll still be in the same spot he was in the night before when she checks in, saying something about letting life happen to him instead of forcing anything.  
  
It’s surprisingly comfortable, the way these calls with him just slot into her life like she’s never known anything else.  
  
After, she’ll hang up the phone and tiptoe over to Polo’s room, and usually, he’ll be in bed already, reading a book. She likes that she knows these things about him now — like that he sleeps on the left side of the bed (thank god, because she prefers the right) and what he sounds like when he gets annoyed at her alarm going off in the morning.  
  
At this point, her room is a glorified walk-in closet. She doesn’t sleep in it. 


	3. Chapter 3

Freshers’ week is, honestly, much more excessive than Lu expects.  
  
(English drinking culture as a whole seems excessive, and she’s saying that as a healthy eighteen-year-old who has just spent most of her summer drunk.)

It starts with a general orientation day at school on Monday, and through ice breakers she meets some of the faculty, then some of her classmates, and then before she knows it they’re in a pub around the corner at two in the afternoon and she’s somehow had four drinks and no lunch. 

After, they go back for the welcome fair, where she’s both impressed and shocked at all the different student societies to choose from — she loves Beyoncé, but isn’t sure that’s enough of a reason to join a club about her.

She stops to talk to the people at the Application of Psychedelics (seriously?) society counter and snaps a picture of a brochure for Valerio because he would absolutely love this. London is the coke capital of the world; she knows he’d fit right in.

In the end, she’s sort of considering joining Marxist society, because she’s pretty sure she’d easily win a debate against a drunk Marxist, but refrains. Most of these clubs and societies look like an excuse for binge drinking, so she’ll have to be selective if she wants to have time to attend all the socials.

Then she spots a group of people eagerly advertising Mexico society and she obviously has no choice but to join. Most of them aren’t from Mexico, but she’s all about being a good cultural ambassador and spreading the Mexico love. (Her father would be so, so proud.) They instantly chat her up, tell her about their favorite Mexican restaurants in the city, and she agrees to go out with them tonight.

Polo is at his own freshers' week, which she thinks must be going well judging by the drunk texts she’s gotten on and off since lunchtime. He sends her a selfie with some random (cute) guy, captures it “found one of your people” and she’s not even sure what that means, but laughs anyway and texts back a bunch of emojis.

If she doesn’t eat soon, she might starve to death, so she leaves, sort of just starts walking towards the riverbank and prays an exciting food option will present itself to her. She texts Polo, because he might be around, and he just replies with his location. He’s at a Nando's near Holborn, which is sort of halfway between their respective campuses, and she’s not far from it so she decides to stop by.

When she walks through the door, he spots her instantly and gets up, waving. Great, so he’s happy drunk, too. He’s with some people from school, two guys and three girls, and Lu sort of instantly wants to make sure they don’t get any ideas and back off, so she walks over and pecks him on the lips in greeting. He doesn’t seem confused by that at all, just smiles at her a little and introduces her to the people at the table.

They scoot over and she slides into the booth next to Polo, and when she sighs loudly and says “What’s a girl got to do to get some food around here?” they all laugh and point her towards the counter.

Ugh, self-service restaurants are such a burden. She still gets up, orders way too much food for her to conceivably finish, and when Polo steals some of her peri peri chips, she doesn’t really mind.

They go on their separate nights out, texting sporadically, and at the end of the night she’s wasted and really, really tired of introducing herself to new people. She’s pretty sure she’ll never see most of them again. 

Polo texts her, asks where she is and she tells him the name of the club and waits for him to join her — one last drink before they go home can’t hurt. She goes back to dancing with the few people she knows here whose names she bothered to remember - a girl named Anna from Mexico society and this tall, lanky Italian guy Stefano. The club is absolutely packed, and she loses track of time, doesn’t know how long it’s been since Polo told her he was on his way.

Someone’s tapping her on the shoulder then, and she can see her new friends staring, laughing at the forward guy who’d choose to hit on her like this. She decides to give them a little show. 

Turning around, she smiles at Polo and before he can hug her, she just throws herself at him, kissing him slow and deep. It feels kind of amazing to be able to do this, in public, without having anyone judging them, the way their group of friends back home undoubtedly would. 

She introduces him to the group as her roommate and they laugh, like she clearly meant to say boyfriend but made a joke out of it. 

They get a little carried away with dancing, stay for one final drink, and when Polo calls them an Uber and kisses her on the sidewalk as they wait for it to arrive, it almost feels too good to be true. 

Later, she’s naked in Polo’s bed as he sleeps soundly next to her and she decides to check her phone. Valerio has sent her a bunch of pictures of a hike he went on in the Pyrénées and she finds herself smiling as she scrolls through them. _“Hope school is fun, miss u”,_ is all he sent with them, and she selects a few candids she’s taken today, laughs when she finds one of herself wearing a sombrero as she does a shot of tequila. _“Miss you more,”_ she types, but then goes back and deletes it. It feels too trivial. It doesn’t seem good enough. 

She hits send on the pictures and keeps them caption-less because she can’t think of anything more profound than confessing that she wishes he was here with her. And that seems way too honest, even for them.  
  
**  
  
The rest of the week is a drunken blur, and more often than not she gets home to Polo stumbling through the apartment, equally wasted. Other times they meet up on their way home, and it’s definitely amusing to watch him try to navigate the city after what he calls ‘a few’ drinks. (She’s guessing it was ten to fifteen.)  
  
On Friday, he convinces her to join him at a King’s College party, tells her no one will know she’s not a student and she agrees, but only if she gets to make up a character to play.  
  
She kind of gets way, way too into it, makes up a whole backstory and when she walks into the living room dressed in leggings that stop just above her ankle and the oversized hoodie Polo got her, he looks at her like he’s never seen her before. Her hair is pulled back into two separate French braids and she stuck to mostly neutral makeup, not the aggressive eyeliner she usually likes to wear. She’s wearing low top converse (yes, she bought them specifically for this occasion, shut up) and she looks like a completely different person.  
  
She knows she looks hot. Different, more casual, but still very, very hot. (What? She likes to tell it like it is.)  
  
Polo walks over, tugs on one of the braids and laughs. “I kinda like those,” he says and she files that away for later.  
  
They walk to the tube, chatting, and he quizzes her on this new persona she’s made up. 

“Well, my name is Marta, I’m from a small village in Spain, and going to King’s college to study philosophy has always been my dream,” she gives gives him a lopsided smile which turns into a triumphant grin when she hears him laugh at her little introduction.  
  
“And how do we know each other, Marta?” He asks, contemplative. She loves him for going along with her bullshit.   
  
"We met at the airport on the flight over here," she decides, grinning.

“You’re fucking crazy,” he chuckles and shakes his head at her. 

She nods, completely unashamed. “I’m fucking crazy and you _love_ it.”

The way he tugs on her braids and pulls her closer makes her think she’s right.  
  
(The way he keeps casually touching the King’s crest on her hoodie throughout the night makes her wonder if he likes having her so blatantly branded as his. She hates to admit it, but she really, really likes the idea of it.)

**  
  
Lu is selective when it comes to making friends — real friends who she doesn’t just see once a week over drinks — so she’s kind of delighted when she finds someone in the law program who she can tolerate.  
  
Leah is, for all intents and purposes, a blonde, Scandinavian, slightly taller version of Lu. Her father is a diplomat, so she’s been through the whole international school experience — and as silly as that sounds, it’s kind of a huge relief for Lu. Not many people get how different it is to grow up in a country that isn’t your own, surrounded by people in the same situation, meaning you never get to fully integrate and feel like a local. They both have the same international school accent, as anyone she comes in contact with likes to point out, and mentioning schools in different countries during random anecdotes isn’t weird for Leah, who has spent her teenage years in Russia and then France.  


Mostly, though, Lu is thrilled to have someone to gossip about their classmates and professors with. They meet at a faculty mixer in their first week of real classes, bond over the fact that they think their Criminal Law professor has the worst taste in shirts in the world and two glasses of champagne later, Lu is pretty sure she’s found her platonic soulmate. (Or, well, the closest anyone can get to that while Carla is still alive.)  
  
Lu doesn’t know why, but she decides not to tell Leah about her living arrangements and romantic involvements straight away.  
  
But then, a few days later, they run into Polo at a coffee shop in between classes — or no, he stops by because Lu left her keys at home, and he has a late class and wanted to make sure she could get in — and because he looks the way he does and can be incredibly charming when he wants to be, Leah has a lot of questions.  
  
“Oh please. I know that face," Leah demands. "Who is he? What's he like?”  
  
Lu is a drama queen, so she appreciates when other people stoop to her level. She raises a a scarily perfect eyebrow at her.  
  
“We live together,” she looks down at her iced coffee, trying for coy because she enjoys getting a rise out of people. It’s kind of thrilling.  
  
“And have you given into the temptation of living with a man?” The bluntness in that statement reminds her of Carla and Lu laughs.  
  
“Oh, you've totally slept with him," Leah says, like it's just a fact.   
  
Lu nods slightly, bites her lip. “It’s kind of,” she pauses for emphasis. “… Complicated.”  
  
“What, like open-relationship-complicated? He-has-a-girlfriend-complicated?”  
  
They both laugh, and Lu wonders why they’re having this conversation in the middle of the day, instead of over gin martinis sometime at night.  
  
“My best friend dated him for about five years,” Leah shrugs at that like there are worse things in life.  
  
“Is she still into him?”  
  
At this, Lu laughs out loud. “Carla? No way,” because that would actually make all of this so much worse.  
  
“So what, you’re just friends now?”  
  
Lu nods and takes a sip of her coffee.  
  
"A friend you sleep with." Leah isn’t even trying to hide her glee, grinning at Lu over her cup of coffee.  
  
Well, yeah. She does have a point there.  
  
“I mean, occasionally, I guess,” Lu shrugs.  
  
Leah doesn’t buy it. Perceptive little bitch — Lu decides she _really_ likes this girl. “When did you last see him naked?”  
  
“This morning?” The blonde scoffs and Lu scrunches up her nose and laughs.  
  
“Okay, so you’re both just stupid and in denial? Is that it?” Lu rolls her eyes at her. She’d love to tell her the real reason why this is all much, much more complicated. But she met the girl three days ago, she’s not gonna tell her about Val yet.  
  
Leah looks at her, pensive. "Are you dating anyone else?” Lu shakes her head no. She isn’t, really. “Is he?” She shakes her head again. It’s technically true — neither of them is _dating_ Valerio.  
  
“Well, then I don’t see the issue here,” they’ve finished their coffees and when Lu checks her phone for the time, she realizes they better get back to class.  
  
“Enough about my bizarre love life,” Lu mutters as she gets up. “What about yours?”  
  
It’s the most fun conversation Lu has had in a while, even if it leaves a slightly bitter taste in her mouth. Because Leah makes it sound like dating Polo would be pretty fucking easy.

**  


She’s on FaceTime with Val one night, sitting in the living room, when Polo walks out of the bathroom in nothing but a towel and plops down next to her. She’s got AirPods in, and Valerio is talking, so she gives Polo a look and figures he’ll understand what’s going on.

It’s apparent he doesn’t when he scoots closer and puts his head on her shoulder.

“What are you doing?” He asks, and she wordlessly angles her laptop over to him and hands him one of her AirPods.

If Valerio thinks anything of Polo walking around half-naked and coming up to hang out with her like that, he doesn’t say anything.

They talk for over an hour, and to her surprise, she realizes she not only misses having Val around, but misses hanging out with the two of them, together.

At the end of the call, Polo tells him he better stop by soon and Val makes a noncommittal noise as he mentions he’s got to go because the hostel he’s staying at in the south of France is hosting a wine and cheese night.

If he doesn’t visit them soon, she’ll have to track him down herself.  
  
**  
  
During her second week of classes, Lu learns she has no idea how a one night stand is supposed to work.  
  
She hooks up with one of the upperclassmen student union reps at this law faculty pub crawl because he’s tall and blond and he sort of makes her laugh. He’s the exact opposite of her type, but she figures college is for experimenting.  
  
Really, she’d just like to prove to herself that she’s capable of having casual sex. See, she’s done the whole friends with benefits thing — first, with Guzmán and now with Polo — but she has a feeling you’re not actually supposed to cuddle, sleep in the same bed, and go out for food with your fuck buddies, so she may or may not have been doing this wrong all along.  
  
(She still hasn’t slept in her own room once since she moved in, and she’s kind of freaking out about the domesticity of it all.)  
  
So when they’re at the fifth and final pub on their list, which happens to be a twenty-minute walk from her place, she decides to be forward.  
  
“Buy me a drink?”  
  
The guy — John, she thinks he said his name is John — smiles and nods. She’s been drinking G&Ts all night, and he motions to the bartender for another round.  
  
Her phone is sitting on the bar between them, and when it lights up and a picture of her and Val pops up on the screen, she mentally curses him for having terrible timing. Way to remind her that she shouldn’t be doing this. She ignores the call and smiles at John instead.  
  
John laughs, like he’s seen a million girls do this in his presence before, and raises his glass in her general direction to toast her. “Boyfriend?” He asks, and she kind of likes that he’s being direct.  
  
“Nope,” she replies, is glad he doesn’t press her on it further when she doesn’t elaborate. “You?”  
  
John’s hand lands on her thigh, brushing the hem of her skirt. “Do I have a boyfriend? No, not at the moment.”  
  
She laughs at that and figures it doesn’t matter anyway — it’s not like she wants to be with him.  
  
He’s really very handsome. He might be smart and interesting as well, but Lu is paying very little attention to that. That’s not what she’s interested in tonight.   
  
Over his shoulder, she catches Leah’s eye and tries not to laugh when the girl gives her a suggestive smile and a thumbs up.  
  
They finish their respective drinks and she puts a hand on his arm, feeling bold.  
  
This is a truly bad idea. Maybe one of the worst.  
  
“Take me home,” she says, doesn’t ask because it’s not a question. It’s an order. Unsurprisingly, he agrees.  
  
She lets him take her hand as they walk out of the pub, and then he’s crowding her against the nearest wall. It’s a good kiss, great even, but she doesn’t want to waste any more time.  
  
Pushing him away, she grabs him by the hand and starts walking. They’re chatting as they walk along the mostly empty streets, and she briefly thinks she probably should’ve picked someone less nice for this casual hook up — he seems like the kind of person she’d probably want to be friends with.  
  
As they round the corner and her building comes into view he laughs, because he’d jokingly told her she must be loaded if she lives in Bankside earlier and the elaborate lobby of the building alone proves his point. She rolls her eyes playfully.  
  
“Any roommates I need to know about?” He asks her in the elevator, his hand playing with the zipper on her skirt.  
  
“Just one,” she says, and belatedly realizes she didn’t text Polo to tell him she’d be home late or having anyone over. (She didn’t know what to say, really.) “He’ll be asleep already, anyway.”  
  
The elevator doors open and she fumbles with her keys when John bites at her neck from behind.  
  
She can see the light is still on in Polo’s room where his door is left slightly ajar.  
  
All this had seemed like a great idea in the abstract, but as she finds herself dragging a virtual stranger past Polo’s door and towards her own, she feels doubt creeping in.  
  
But she’s not a quitter, and she’s kind of tipsy and definitely curious about John’s… abilities… so she pulls her bedroom door closed behind them and gives him a devious smile.  
  
As far as sex goes, it’s pretty good, but that doesn’t surprise her. They’re both attractive, and his competitiveness mirrors her own, so it’s only natural that would translate to them being a great physical match. Still, when he lingers next to her for a while afterward and then suggests he better go, she nods. She likes a man who knows what he wants, and when to leave.  
  
The shower she takes once he’s left is cold, and when she walks back to her room, she sees Polo’s lights are off now, his door closed.  
  
She sleeps on her own for the first time in weeks and kind of hates it.  
  
In the morning, she finds Polo at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, sipping coffee as he eats a bowl of cereal. He doesn’t quite meet her eyes when he greets her, and she feels bad.  
  
Lu feels her face fall. She’s such an idiot.  
  
Too lazy to make her own, she grabs his coffee cup and takes a sip, sitting down next to him. “Do you mind?”  
  
He laughs, shakes his head.  
  
"I like sharing," he says. She’s not sure he’s talking about coffee.

Lu scrunches up her nose and smiles, doubtful. "You do?"

"No." His fingers catch her chin and then he's leaning towards her, his mouth grazing hers before he smiles too. "I'm terrible at it, honestly."

She’s slightly hungover and barely awake — that’s her excuse for saying what she says next. “You didn’t seem to mind when it was Val,” her voice comes out quiet, with a provocative edge.

“That’s different,” Polo says instantly, and she finds herself nodding a bit. It _is_ different. His face is still inches from hers, and she’s having a hard time moving away.

“Lu,” he utters her name like a warning, moves a hand into her hair to pull her closer. “Never do that again.”

She’s a competitive asshole, even right now, when he’s being demanding and possessive which is really just very, very hot.

“Or what?” She probes, bites her lip when she sees his eyes get impossibly darker, his pupils blown.

He doesn’t answer, instead getting up and lifting her up onto the kitchen island. When he finally leans in to kiss her, it’s bruising and rough and she feels her eyes roll back into her head. This is so much better than last night already.

(She thinks it was almost worth doing this for his jealous, possessive reaction alone. She wishes Val was here — no one gets territorial quite like him.) 

**  
  
She’s sort of dozing in bed next to Polo on a Saturday morning when she notices him picking up his phone and laughing instantly at whatever the person on the other end says in greeting. No one other than Valerio ever calls him, so she's sure it's Val.  
  
“She’s asleep,” Polo says, and she tries very hard not to move. She wants to hear this.  
  
“No, she definitely isn’t,” Lu doesn’t know what he’s referring to and she’s annoyed — the least he could do is put the phone on speaker to satisfy her curiosity. “You think so?”  
  
Polo’s voice changes, and she thinks she feels his eyes on her. “I’m pretty sure she’d kill me if I woke her up,” he says, but his hand is already sort of trailing up and down her side. “I’ll tell you later,” he promises, and then he puts his phone away and moves towards her, grabbing her hip roughly.  
  
She lets out a moan and he chuckles. “You’re terrible at pretending to be asleep,” he says, then turns her around and kisses her.  
  
It’s not the worst way to wake up.  
  
(It’s not the worst thing to know they talk about her, and what she likes, when they think she isn’t listening.)  
  
**  
  
The school part of school is going pretty well, too. Her classes are interesting, even if they seem demanding, and she makes sure to join study groups and spend time at the library to balance out the weekday binge drinking and her inability to turn down an invitation for a night out. 

UCL operates on a term system, so exams are little more than two months away.

One of the TAs for her Intro to Criminal Law class asks her to go for a coffee after class, and she says yes because he’s very attractive and she’s a networker at heart. No, she’s not gonna date him but she’s gonna make sure to stay on his good side.  
  
They’re at a random coffee shop on campus, and she’s really enjoying the caffeine after a long morning of lectures.  
  
“So why law?” Matthew, the TA, asks, because he’s a predictable small-talker.  
  
Lu purses her lips and smooths out her schoolgirl-chic plaid dress. “Because I’m smart as hell and love winning fights, so law seemed like a pretty good field to go into.”  
  
He chuckles at that. Men are always, without fail, doing that when she tells it like it is — like they’re intimidated by her self-confidence, or something. She’s not gonna make herself smaller to please them.  
  
“Criminal or corporate law?”  
  
She honestly has no idea what she’ll do with this degree when she’s done, but bullshitting him is easy enough.  
  
“Maybe neither, who knows. Might just do a master's in international relations after and be a diplomat, like my father.”  
  
She doesn’t mention that they no longer speak, because that’s none of his business. She can brag about her connections, if that makes this grad student take her seriously.  
  
He looks impressed, on some level, but then again, she’s pretty sure the sort of circles grad students at UCL move in mean he’s used to people name dropping ambassadors and politicians.  
  
Still. Lu likes being impressive. 

  
**  
  
“Lu,” Polo’s voice is muffled by the sound of the steam shower. “Carla’s calling you.”  
  
He sounds a little anxious, which is probably because Carla is the type of person that will just keep calling you back until you pick up, and as her ex-boyfriend, he is painfully aware of that.  
  
“Just answer it,” she yells back. It’s ten o’clock at night, and she’s almost done with her shower.  
  
She turns the water off and grabs her robe and a towel.  
  
When she walks into Polo’s room, he’s on FaceTime with Carla, nodding contemplatively. He hasn’t seen her walk in yet, and she lingers for a moment, amused at his serious expression.  
  
“So you’re upset because this guy didn’t jump at the opportunity to sleep with you? That’s why you look like you’ve been crying for hours?”  
  
Lu bites her lip and smiles. It’s cute of him to bother, but she knows that’s really, really not what Carla wants to hear. She walks up behind Polo, waves at Carla on camera and takes the phone from him.  
  
“Oh thank god,” Carla says, rolling her eyes. “I was beginning to think I’d have to talk to a rational person about this, when all I really wanted was a pep talk from you to confirm I am indeed still a bad bitch.”  
  
At this, Lu laughs. She shoos Polo out of the room and shoots him a grateful smile when he closes the door behind himself.  
  
Carla spends at least thirty minutes explaining her latest boy problems to her, and Lu enjoys that for once, it isn’t her romantic involvements being scrutinized. The guy kind of sounds like a rich, brooding idiot, but then again that’s kind of Carla’s type, evidenced by the rich, brooding idiot Lu is currently living with. Still, French men sound exhausting — Lu thought _she_ was high maintenance.  
  
“To summarize, I think you are definitely a bad bitch and should stop at nothing to get this guy naked, even if it’s just to prove a point,” Lu says in the end, and Carla laughs. “And now I really have to go because I have an 8 AM class in the morning, darling.”  
  
She’s already slipped under the covers on her side of the bed, and she’s getting more and more sleepy by the minute.  
  
Carla sighs, jokingly calls her a bad friend and they’re about to hang up when Carla seems to notice something. “Hey, whose room are you in?” She asks, and Lu instantly recognizes the amused glint in her eye.  
  
Lu tries her very best to look and sound casual. “Polo’s,” she mutters, burrowing further under the covers.  
  
Carla seems to consider this information with some amount of seriousness. “Left or right side of the bed?”

“Uh, right?” Lu isn’t sure she understands the point of the question.

Then, the blonde starts laughing, and Lu rolls her eyes in preparation for the punch line that she’s sure will follow.  
  
“That’s Polo’s side of the bed — he used to literally yell at me when I tried to sleep on it.”  
  
Lu doesn’t know what to make of that, not that it really matters.  
  
“Okay, while that is _riveting_ information to have, I’m hanging up now,” she raises her eyebrows, annoyed. “Text me pictures of this guy, I need to know what he looks like before I can give any further remote advice.”  
  
She hangs up and drags herself out of bed, over to her room where she changes into pajamas and runs a brush through her wet hair.  
  
Polo is on the couch watching Netflix (Gossip Girl, she realizes triumphantly) when she walks back out, and he scoots over to make room for her. She must look tense, because he reaches over and starts casually kneading her shoulders like it’s second nature.

“Is Carla alright?” He asks, carefully, and she lets out a groan.  
  
“She just needed guidance on being her best, bitchiest self,” Lu mutters, leaning into his touch.  
  
Polo chuckles at that. “Well, she came to the right person for that — not sure I would’ve been much help.”  
  
One thing she’s learned she is actually very, very into is when Polo makes self-deprecating jokes.  
  
She turns around, leans over him, says “You’re totally a bad bitch,” and then she’s kissing him with tenderness.  
  
Bad bitches have feelings, too. 

(Much later, when they move to the bedroom, she stops kissing him just long enough to ask, “Hey, did you give up your side of the bed for me?”, and has to hide a fond smile when he just nods and shrugs.

“You seemed comfortable over there, I didn’t wanna make you move,” he says it like it’s no big deal. 

From her vantage point on top of him, she considers this.

“I _am_ comfortable.”

It’s the closest they’ve come to talking about feelings.) 

  
**  
  
Valerio checks in from a random, remote village in Normandy, tells her the beaches are amazing and perfect for morning walks and yoga.  
  
She rolls her eyes at him, but still asks about a million follow up questions, just kind of content to finally be hearing from him. She loves how passionate he sounds as he goes on and on about the landscapes he’s seen and the food he’s eaten.  
  
He asks her about school, and London, and life in general, and she launches into a story about this bizarre rave they ended up at last weekend, how she had to physically drag Polo away from this idiot who wouldn’t stop touching her ass because she’s pretty sure he was about to throw a punch.  
  
“Good,” Valerio says, his expression serious. It’s an odd look on him. “No one but us gets to touch you like that.”  
  
If she bites her lip and lets out a small groan, it’s only because she wasn’t expecting it. Valerio is bold and brazen, and she absolutely loves it.  
  
She still changes the subject, because otherwise she might end up telling him to get on a plane right this second, and she’s trying to exercise restraint here.  
  
Not having him at her disposal really fucking sucks, sometimes. (All the time.)  
  
**  
  
If Polo has realized she hasn’t looked at a single apartment since they got to London, he hasn’t said anything.

Lu is absolutely sure there’s no place in all of London that she’d like as much as their place, anyway.

**  
  
They fall into a routine without even trying. He learns her class schedule and she memorizes his — mainly because it’s more convenient that way. It’s totally just to make their lives easier.  
  
She knows he goes to see a movie every Wednesday with his obscure retro film club (fucking film students and their weird extracurriculars), and he reminds her to go to bed early on Tuesdays because he knows she’s got public law at eight the next morning.  
  
His style changes, too. The people he hangs out with now are more casual, the kind of wealthy people who purposefully dress down, and she thinks he looks great in jeans and expensive vintage designer sneakers.  
  
They make staying in on Mondays a rule, usually accompanied by shitty Netflix movies and Chinese food from their favorite takeout place around the corner, and she tries really hard not to question how domestic it all feels. Her friends refer to it as their ‘date night’ and she rolls her eyes at them, but isn’t sure it’s factually inaccurate.  
  
She gets home pretty late from the library one day at the end of October, and runs into Polo in the lobby of their building where he just smiles at her and keeps walking.

“Movie night, right?” She says to him as he’s walking away from her and he nods, checks his watch like he’s already late.

“Oh hey, there’s a present for you,” he adds, like he forgot to mention it before and she instantly feels giddy and excited. “Left it on your bed.”

He’s late to meet people and she’s impatient to find out what’s waiting for her upstairs, but she still runs over to him and kisses him, just quickly.

“Enjoy the movie,” she tells him, then makes a beeline for the elevator. On her way up, her mind races with all the possibilities of what could be waiting for her upstairs. God, she loves presents.

She quickly unlocks the door, drops her bag and shoes off in the hall and shrugs off her coat, which she throws on the couch.

The door to her room is ajar, and she pushes it open.

When she sees Valerio sleeping in her bed, her jaw nearly drops. She hadn’t even considered that the surprise could be _this_ — could be _him_. Come to think of it, she hasn’t heard from him in a few days; at least now she knows why. A part of her is impressed that Polo managed to keep this a secret.

She strips off her blouse and skirt, slips into bed behind him and puts an arm around his stomach.

He seems to wake up at that, sort of wiggles out of her embrace to turn around and face her and she’s enthralled. How can he possibly look even better than she remembered? 

His thumb rolls over her lip and her breath catches.

A giant grin spreads out over his face, and she playfully rolls her eyes at him.

“Stop smiling,” she mutters.

He laughs and tugs her forward, his fingers brushing against her hip. His mouth bites at her throat. “I’m not smiling.”

“Oh, you’re smiling.”

She kisses the smile off his face, trying hard to make herself understand this is actually happening.  
  
In the weirdest possible way, she feels complete.  
  
(Belatedly, she realizes Polo left them alone on purpose, so they’d have time to catch up. She thinks it’s incredibly sweet of him.)  
  
**

“How long are you staying?”

They’re in the living room, eating takeout on the couch in their underwear.

“As long as you want,” he says, like it’s that easy, and she can’t keep herself from smiling wide.

Laughing, he steals a piece of sushi from her plate and pops it in his mouth.

“Hey — now _you_ stop smiling,” he teases. She’s pretty sure she couldn’t stop if she tried. “It’s creeping me out, seeing you like this.”

At that, she laughs, full-on. “I’m sorry seeing me so happy is an inconvenience to you.”

He kisses her before she can duck away. “You should be,” he breathes, and she decides they’ve had enough food for now.

She takes him to Polo’s room because it’s late and it’s where she sleeps, and when Polo gets home later that night, she pretends she’s already dozed off. Valerio is drawing circles on her naked back, and she’s resisting the urge to push back against his hand.

Polo laughs as she hears him get undressed. “I see you didn’t waste any time,” he tells Valerio quietly and Val chuckles next to her. She wonders which side of the bed he’ll get into and sort of hopes she gets to sleep in between them.  
  
(All of this feels way too normal, like they’ve never not been open about the fact that they all like each other, and she’s trying really hard not to let it freak her out.)

When Polo slides into bed behind Val, she decides to take matters into her own hands. Turning around and climbing over Valerio, she squeezes herself into the tight space between the two of them and instantly loves how well they fit together.

Polo laughs, used to her dramatic antics by now. “Are you ever actually asleep when we talk about you?” His arm wraps around her middle like it’s second nature, spooning her from behind. Val is facing her, drapes an arm over her hip, his hand holding on to Polo’s arm. 

She doesn’t bother answering Polo, just burrows a little closer to his chest and sighs contently.

Lu likes this.

**  
  
Her alarm goes off at 8:30, which is way, way too early and she feels Valerio reach for her phone on the nightstand to silence it. She’s got class at 10, and not a single cell in her body is even remotely interested in going.  
  
It’s Polo who nudges her shoulder with his chin, voice gruff with sleep. “Skip,” he says, and she’s very, very tempted to agree but she’s got a study group meeting after Contract Law, and then another lecture and-- well, she’s not sure it’s the best idea.  
  
She makes a frustrated sound. “I can’t,” she whispers, and both of the boys instantly seem more awake. Polo moves his hand up her body, tracing the small tattoo on her shoulder before turning his attention to her neck. At the same time, Valerio brushes his hand down her side and over her stomach and she groans. They’re not playing fair.  
  
“Stop it,” she says, but it doesn’t sound very convincing, not even to her own ears.  
  
Polo leans over to kiss her, and Valerio’s trailing his lips down her neck and this is already so much better than any dream she’s ever had about having them both in her bed.  
  
She needs to put a stop to this right now, or she’ll never leave. Pushing them both away, she gets up and ignores the way they leer at her when she stands at the end of the bed, naked.  
  
Her legs buckle a little and she’s painfully aware that walking will be difficult today. She walks around to the nightstand and picks up her phone, groaning as she feels the muscles in her thighs burn with every step.  
  
Valerio sits up, the covers still over his lap, and swings his legs over the side of the bed so he's sitting in front of her. "What?" he asks, reaching for her hips.  


"I can barely walk," she says softly. He looks far too proud of this.  
  
Polo is watching their exchange, half asleep as he props his head up on a pillow, an amused look on his face.  
  
She wants to lean into Val’s touch, wants to sit down in his lap and pick up where they left off last night, but reminds herself that she can’t. No, she needs to go to class, take notes, and study and prioritize school over her stupidly high sex drive.  
  
As she stands under the warm stream of the shower, she can’t help but let her thoughts drift to the two men she left behind in Polo’s warm, comfortable bed. Ugh. She hates class.  
  
Valerio texts her a selfie of him and Polo, shirtless and still in bed, halfway through her first lecture and when Leah looks over at her phone and nods her approval, Lu feels a weird sense of pride at knowing she’s the one they share a bed with.  
  
“Who’s the hot curly-haired dude,” she whispers, and Lu bites her lip. Leah has met Polo, knows him and Lu are somewhat committed, but Lu has never had a reason to mention Val. (She’s never looked for a reason.)  
  
“Just a friend of ours who’s visiting,” Lu settles on, and Leah gives her a look that lets her know she is very interested in hearing more about this. Lu is very glad they’re in class and can’t talk.  
  
Carla forwards her one of Valerio’s Instagram stories not much later, which is just a bizarre video of the view from their living room, getting more and more zoomed in until only a pixellated version of the dome of St. Paul’s remains. _“?”_ Is all Carla says, and Lu sighs. She would’ve appreciated at least a full day of having Valerio around before Carla finds out and starts teasing her about it.  
  
But no, Lu decides to take her own advice. She sends back a suggestive emoji, then a happy one and when Carla makes a joke about not calling her for a while because she knows Lu will be busy, she looks around, quickly takes a picture of herself giving the camera the finger and hits send.  
  
Lu is a bad bitch and she’s gonna stop at nothing to get what she wants — even if that happens to be the attention of not one but _two_ men. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I think I ship Polo/Lu now? Wow, that sort of crept up on me while writing this.
> 
> Also, I live in London and promise about 99% of the university related stuff in this chapter is legit.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You'll notice I've had to change the rating of this to explicit. This is for... well, reasons. If you're not here for explicit smut, you might not want to read this chapter, that's all. You've been warned!

When Lu gets out of her final class in the afternoon, she’s pretty much ready to pass out.  
  
Leah has other plans, though, grabbing her arm as she tries to sneak out of the building.  
  
“Yo, where do you think you’re going?”  
  
Lu laughs as she rolls her eyes. “Home?”  
  
The exasperated look on the blonde’s face would be comical if Lu wasn’t so tired. “It’s Thursday! We get wine drunk on Thursdays!”  
  
Lu is honestly way too exhausted for that. “But I’m tired,” she says, pouting a little. Leah doesn’t budge.  
  
“What, did Curls keep you up all night?”  
  
Lu gasps at the nickname and punches Leah’s shoulder lightly — even though she’s not wrong.  
  
“Ugh, okay, fine. We can have one drink, alright?” When Leah nods excitedly, Lu links her arm through hers and directs her to the nearest pub.  
  
Never in her life has a night that starts out with her claiming she will just be having one drink ended with her leaving after one, and tonight is no different.  
  
Valerio calls her when she’s nursing her third glass of wine, and Leah gives her the most ridiculous look when she sees his caller ID picture pop up. It’s a picture of her and Val which she loves, him hugging her from behind as he nuzzles her neck as she grins and — yeah, okay, she knows what it looks like.  
  
She rolls her eyes at Leah, picks up the phone and walks outside to talk to him.  
  
“What?” She barks, and she instantly hears Valerio laugh on the other end. “Did you draw straws to figure out who has to check up on me and you picked the short one?”  
  
“Are you drunk?”  
  
She’s feeling snappy, and she’s glad Val is the kind of person who doesn’t mind being snapped at.  
  
She scoffs. “Barely.”  
  
“We’re gonna grab food and go for a drink,” he says, casual. “And Polo wants to know where you are and if you want to join.”  
  
That makes her laugh, but she tries not to let it show. “Does he? Why isn’t he the one calling me then?”  
  
When Valerio doesn’t reply, she decides to ignore her own rhetorical question. “I’m out with a friend. I think this place serves food, I’ll text you the address.”  
  
Back inside, Leah is giving her that look again when she slides back into the booth across from her. There are two shots of tequila sitting on the table between them, and Lu laughs. “Just one drink, right?”  
  
“Oh yeah, of course,” Leah chuckles, then holds up the salt shaker and Lu licks her wrist and stretches it towards her instinctively. (Tequila is never a bad idea.)  
  
They throw back the tequila and Lu loves how it burns as it goes down.  
  
She can tell Leah wants to ask about her phone call, and Lu figures she’ll just bite the bullet. “The boys are stopping by soon,” she says, and Leah instantly perks up at that.  
  
“The boys? Who are ‘the boys’ exactly?” Lu rolls her eyes and waits for her to make the connection. “Oh, is this Polo and Curls?”  
  
“Please stop calling him that."  
  
“Well, you haven’t told me his name yet!”  
  
Lu considers her options. She has absolutely no reason to tell Leah the truth, not when they’re in a city where no one knows her or Val or how they know each other. Still, a part of her wants to — if only to see whether she’ll freak out and never speak to her again. Call it masochism. 

“His name is Valerio,” she says, and decides not to mention that they share a last name for now. 

Lu isn’t drunk enough to explain what Polo and Val are to her yet. Truthfully, she’s not sure she really knows how to define it anyway. 

Thankfully, Leah does it for her. “You know, I’ve always thought polyamory is the future of humankind.”  
  
Okay, maybe she _is_ drunk enough to talk about this. They probably won’t remember this tomorrow anyway.  


Polo and Valerio get to the pub one drink later, and Lu is sufficiently tipsy when she spots them walking in. Leah glances at them, trying for subtlety, and gives Lu an impressed look. “Damn, girl,” Lu tries to shush her, but ends up laughing. 

The entire situation is completely absurd but somehow feels absolutely normal. 

Of course, Leah gets along just fine with Polo and Val, hitting the ground running as they debate anything from their taste in clothes to politics to food preferences, and Lu finds herself sitting back and watching the exchange fondly. It’s nice to see the boys — _her_ boys — get along with her only real friend in the city. 

They do more shots, even though Lu and Leah have class in the morning, all because Valerio is the best bad influence in the world.  
  
The blonde finally decides to leave, says something about it already being eleven o’clock at night (when did that happen?) and drunkenly hugs Lu goodbye.  
  
“You better get her home safe,” she tells Val and Polo, who nod in response. She turns to Lu. “See you tomorrow — if we make it to class, that is.” Lu knows this is becoming less and less likely with every drink.  
  
At the end of the night, Lu is drunk. Not tipsy, or mildly intoxicated — she’s absolutely wasted. The world is spinning when the boys finally help her upstairs and into bed, making quick work of her clothes and pulling the covers back for her. Polo even takes the time to brush her hair for her, because he knows how annoyed she gets when she forgets and wakes up with it all tangled up.  
  
She tries to pull them into bed with her, but they just chuckle, and tell her to sleep it off. Ugh. She was really looking forward to continuing where they left off this morning.

They tuck her into Polo’s bed, leave a bottle of water for her and she hears them talk about watching a movie before they close the door to the bedroom. Lu is having a hard time not throwing up, or else she’d join them.  
  
She finds them asleep on the couch in the living room at six in the morning, spooning, when she runs towards the bathroom and past them to puke up the remnants of tequila and wine in her stomach. If she wasn’t busy trying not to projectile vomit, she’d probably think it’s cute.  
  
She somehow makes it to class, just because it gives her an excuse to stop for a bagel on the way and satisfy the carb craving she has, and Leah greets her outside of the building with two cappuccinos in hand and big, dark designer sunglasses pushed up on her nose.  
  
“I figured you must be feeling just as bad as I am,” she says, and winces at how loud her own voice is. Lu would normally laugh at that, but she can relate. She accepts the paper cup and smiles at her as they walk into school.  
  
“I feel worse, actually,” she mutters. “We stayed for another drink after you left.”  
  
Leah laughs and pulls a face. “That must’ve put a real damper on your wild threesome plans.”  
  
Lu gasps and smacks her arm, slightly scandalized. She can’t remember if she drunkenly told Leah they have yet to consummate their newfound three-way relationship, and wonders what else she forgot about last night.  
  
“I am so not talking to you about this,” she whispers as they walk into the classroom and find a seat in the back.  
  
Leah doesn’t seem to care. “Well,” she singsongs. “There’s always tonight…”  
  
She feels oddly nervous at the thought of that. She decides not to think about it, for now; they’ll cross that bridge when they get to it.  
  
For now, staying awake through the entire lecture and the discussion that follows is difficult enough.  
  
**  
  
After class, Lu grabs a salad and an energy drink from a nearby deli and takes a bus back to South Bank. She walks along the riverbank and finds an empty bench in front of the National Theatre.  
  
(So what if she came up with a whole elaborate plan to call Carla and freak out? She’s only human. If the call doesn’t go well, at least she’ll be able to enjoy nice riverside views.)  
  
Carla answers immediately. “Is everything okay?” Lu usually texts her before calling, so she supposes the question is justified.  
  
“Yes,” Lu says, then sighs. “No… Maybe.”  
  
“Could you try that again, maybe? Try using those words in a sentence.”  
  
Lu grunts. She’s too tired for this, but figured this was the best time to get it over with.  
  
“I’m freaking out,” she finally settles on.  
  
At this, Carla laughs. “I can hear that,” she sounds impatient. “I’m meeting Pierre for lunch in fifteen minutes, so you better freak out fast.”  
  
Lu rolls her eyes. “What kind of douchey name is Pierre? Who the fuck is this guy? Bitch, please.”  
  
“Are you seriously trying to change the subject when you’re the one who called me to talk about your freakout?” 

Ugh, Lu hates being called out. That’s what she gets for calling someone who’s dealt with her antics for five years and counting. 

“It’s just... Should I be overthinking this whole thing?” 

Carla laughs again. “What whole thing? Lu, seriously, I’m not a fucking mind reader.” 

Lu takes a deep breath. Fine. “Tell me that hooking up with Polo and Val is a good idea.”

“Don’t you think it’s a little too late to be asking me that?” 

When Lu doesn’t reply, Carla continues. “What part of this are you actually overthinking?”  


Lu hesitates. “The... physical part?” She finally says, cringing at herself. 

“Oh,” Carla says, like she gets it now. “So you’ve never had a threesome and you’re worried it’s not gonna be good?” 

The scoff Lu lets out is involuntary. “I _know_ it’s gonna be good, I’m just worried it’s gonna be weird.” 

“Look, I gotta go, but you’re a big girl; you’ll be fine. You’ve already fucked them both, they've obviously fucked, I don’t really see how cutting out the middle man would make it weird.” 

She screeches Carla’s name, shocked at her bluntness. “Just take your own advice — sometimes you’ve got to put your ovaries on the table... figuratively speaking. Or literally, I’m not gonna kink shame you.”

“Oh, and please don’t call me to tell me how it goes,” Carla adds, and Lu rolls her eyes. She’s glad they’re not on FaceTime so Carla can’t see. 

“Say hi to Pierre for me,” Lu mutters. “Tell him his name is stupid.” 

Taking in the view, Lu finishes her salad and gives herself a little pep talk. Maybe she needs to come up with a plan to make this happen. 

Lu loves scheming, especially when the endgame is pleasure.  
  
**  
  
When Lu gets home an hour later, she’s got a plan. It’s not foolproof, but she figures it’ll work.  
  
She briefly says hi to the boys, who are in the living room watching something on TV, and then heads to the bathroom for a long shower. She’d been a little too hungover this morning to trust herself with that; it’s never fun to stand under a stream of warm water when you don’t know if you’re gonna puke.  
  
It’s only 3 pm, so she figures they might still go out for dinner or supplies later, so she puts on a casual cotton dress and puts her wet hair into a braid.  


“Move over,” she says as she falls back onto the couch, sort of draping herself over the boys; her head lands in Polo’s lap, and Valerio immediately starts massaging her feet which feels kind of amazing. “What are we watching?” 

“Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” Polo says, and she scoffs because that’s one of the shittiest movies she’s ever seen, and Woody Allen is kind of gross. 

“For a film student, your taste in movies is terrible,” she jokes, and he retaliates by reaching down to tickle her sides. Lu screeches, and tries to sit up, but Valerio is holding her down and watching their exchange, an amused look on his face. 

“I don’t know, Lu, they’re all pretty hot — I think I’m with Polo on this one,” Val runs a hand up her calf and she tries to kick him when he moves it to her knee, just because. 

She finally manages to wrangle out of Polo’s arms and sits up. “Okay, here’s how tonight’s gonna go,” she starts, confident, and both boys look over at her with eager looks on their faces. She bites her lip and sort of loses her train of thought. If they give her any more of those looks, she might have to throw her plans out the window and just drag them to the bedroom now. Maybe that would be easier, anyway, but Lu likes sticking to plans. 

Polo grins at her. “Well?” He plays with the buttons on her dress, which are right between her breasts, and she swats at his hand.

_Ugh_. This would be a lot easier if she wasn’t so sexually frustrated. 

“I’m gonna--,” she interrupts herself when Valerio’s hand drifts up her dress, fingers sort of drumming on her hipbones. She squeezes her eyes shut and tries to form a coherent sentence. “I need a night off from drinking,” she says, finally, and the boys just nod. Her eyes fall to the empty beer bottles on the table in front of them and her stomach sort of lurches at the sight. “Maybe more than one night,” she decides. 

Polo plays with her hair, then just leans over to kiss her and she moans. Valerio’s fingers are still on her hip, and he splays them there, squeezing. It’s enough to make her want to strip naked and get this over with. 

“Both of you are terrible at reading the room,” she says between kisses, and they effortlessly switch roles, Val now kissing her, hard, while Polo bites at her neck. She really was gonna tell them to leave her alone while she recovers from her hangover. That seems pretty impossible now.

Valerio laughs when he pulls away just slightly and she chases his lips. “I don’t know, I feel like _the room_ is being very clear about what _it_ wants,” he tugs on her braid and she lets out this weak involuntary gasp, and it’s all a little too much for her already. 

Maybe her plan of taking the night off and sleeping thirteen hours wasn’t as foolproof as she thought. Maybe plans are for losers, anyway. 

She feels Polo pull away, his arms pushing her into Val’s lap, and she laughs when Val promptly gets up, carrying her as she wraps her legs around his waist. 

Her brain sort of in overdrive, she smirks at Polo over Val’s shoulder, asks, “You two totally planned this, didn’t you?”, and moans when Polo makes eye contact with her and undoes the top button on his pants.  
  
Polo just nods. “You’re not the only one with plans,” he says, and it's easily one of the best things he’s ever said to her.

Yeah, okay, she’s gonna need to get them both naked right now. They’re all just sort of standing there, her still clinging to Valerio, and she’s getting impatient. 

“Okay, well, can you fucking move, please?” Valerio does as he’s told because he’s learned over the years not to mess with her when she gets bossy like this. In no time, he sets her down on Polo’s bed and she just sits there for a second and grins up at the boys. They seem pretty blissed out, and wait for her to make the next move. 

Fine. She can work with that. Her legs are slightly wobbly, but she still gets up, pulls her dress over her head in one swift move and reaches back to unclasp her bra. 

Her head is spinning and she can't tell which of them is staring harder. It’s a pretty great feeling.  
  
She lies down in the middle of the bed, closes her eyes for a moment, and she’s sure the boys are looking at each other, trying to decide on their next move. The bed dips next to her and she reaches out her hand, smiles a little when she grabs a handful of Valerio’s curls and pulls him closer.  
  
She feels Polo move up the bed on the other side of her, and tries to unbutton his shirt with the hand that isn’t tangled in Val’s hair as they kiss. Polo chuckles, pushes her hand away like he has other plans, and kisses a path down her neck instead, closes his mouth around her breast, which, well, she’s not gonna complain about that. He bites down, hard, and she lets out a moan. She’s already feeling completely overstimulated, and they’ve barely even touched her.  
  
She feels kind of foolish for thinking they could’ve waited any longer to do this. (And it's not weird, or awkward, not even for a second.)  
  
“You’re wearing too many clothes,” she breathes, not addressing either of them by name because it’s true for both of them.  
  
Val laughs, pulls himself up a little and pulls his shirt over his head, looks at Polo and grins as he does the same. Lu sort of groans at the sight of them, then reaches out a hand to touch both of their chests. When they lean over her and kiss, all messy and deep, she gasps. This really shouldn’t be as hot as it is. She’d love to explore that further, the idea of just watching them, but right now she’s feeling needy, so she moves down the bed a little bit and pulls down the zipper on Polo’s pants, trying to pull them down his hips. He laughs against Val’s mouth, then breaks away from him and reaches down to push them off. Val doesn’t waste any time, quickly getting up to take off his pants and briefs.  
  
Lu is kind of just staring at them both, her pupils blown, sort of overwhelmed with all the things she wants to do to them, that she wants them to do to _her_. Then Valerio grabs her, pulls her into his lap, and she moans into his mouth when she feels him hard and hot against her.  
  
She’s the only one still wearing any clothes, and Polo reaches for her lacy boyshorts, pulls them off of her one leg at a time so she doesn’t have to move. He’s right behind her, pressing against her back, and she kind of loses it when his hand moves between them, groans when she realizes how wet she is already.  
  
Polo bites down on her neck from behind, says, "Get on your back," in such a demanding voice that Lu doesn't even question it, wouldn't, and does as she’s told. It might be the hottest thing anyone’s ever said to her. 

The boys have definitely talked about this, Lu thinks, when Polo crowds her against the mattress, as Valerio lies down right next to her, his hands just sort of teasingly brushing back and forth over her breasts.  
  
Valerio produces a condom from somewhere, reaches over to roll it onto Polo’s length, and Lu thinks she would laugh at the absurdity of that if Polo wasn't pressing her thighs wide and then running his hard length up and down, dragging it through her wetness and pressing the tip against her teasingly.  
  
She tries to move her hips forward, but Valerio holds her down, just leans in to kiss her slow and deep, as his hand trails from her hip bone to her center.  
  
There’s no way she can take any more of this teasing. Pushing Valerio away, she says the only thing she can manage, which is, "Fuck," and then, "Wait."

Valerio does, but Polo doesn’t. (Which is fine, because she didn’t really mean the waiting part.)  
  
He shifts his weight and pushes into her. Her mouth drops open, but no sound comes out, and he rocks gently, grinding against her. Her eyes find Valerio’s, who is watching her closely, his arm draped over her stomach. Instinctively, she grabs his neck and pulls him towards her for a messy kiss, moaning into his mouth when she feels Polo move inside her. She breaks away from Val to let out a noise she’s never heard herself make before.  
  
"Oh my god," she breathes, quickly, more to herself than to either of them. Polo pulls out completely, which makes her whine. "No. No, please.”  
  
He’s sort of lazily smirking at her when he presses into her again, setting a grueling pace, and her hands move to his back, clutching his shoulders and then scratching across the small of his back. It spurs him on, she can tell, and he gives Valerio a look. Val instantly grabs her hands and holds them down over her head, not letting her move. She closes her eyes, because this is all too good, too much, and Valerio runs a hand up to her neck.  
  
“Open your eyes, Lu,” he says, and she tries, looks at him briefly but closes them again involuntarily when Polo hits a spot deep inside her that always makes her a little crazy. Valerio chuckles, kind of menacingly, and pinches one of her nipples in between his fingers.  
  
“Polo,” he says, and Polo stills his hips. “Don’t let her close her eyes. If she does, you stop, okay?”  
  
She loses track of the number of times she thinks she’s just about to finally come, only for Polo to stop completely, and if Val wasn’t restraining her hands for her, she’d definitely slap him. Polo finally lets go, just sort of collapses on top of her for a moment, and she must zone out a little bit because when she opens her eyes again it’s Valerio on top of her, filling her.  
  
Polo's groaning next to her as he watches her with Val and Lu somehow feels totally in control and yet completely at their mercy.  
  
Valerio doesn’t hold back, clearly no longer interested in teasing her, and she’s pretty sure she screams both of their names when Polo leans over to bite at her neck, then her breasts, not bothering with gentle bites. It’s exhilarating.  
  
When she comes for the first time, she grabs Polo’s arm so tight, she thinks he’ll have bruises, but he doesn’t seem to care, just kisses her sloppily as Valerio continues to fuck her. It’s absolutely too much, all of her nerve endings screaming with every touch, and she never wants to stop feeling like this.  
  
Lu thinks she could come again if someone were touching her, but it seems selfish to ask, so she's not going to. Instead, she sort of props herself up with one arm, reaches the other hand between her legs, fingers grazing Valerio's length as he fucks her. This lasts for maybe a minute or two, and then Polo is batting her hand away, touching her in the way he knows she likes and she’s pretty sure she’s crying when she finally clenches down on Valerio, spent.  
  
He pushes into her hard, holding her there and pulsing into her, makes a sound low in his throat. When he pulls out, she whines, and buries her head against Polo’s chest as he draws soothing circles on her back. Valerio is back next to her a few seconds later, and she thinks she hears the boys talking about how long she needs before they can fuck her again just before she drifts off.  
  
She can't figure out which of them wants her more. She won't even pretend she doesn't love that. (Lu _loves_ attention.)  
  
She gets the thirteen hours of sleep she wanted.  
  
**  
  
The sun isn’t even up yet when Lu wakes up, disoriented and sore. Polo and Valerio are fast asleep on either side of her, and she sort of lets herself relax into them and enjoy this before carefully climbing over Polo and heading to the bathroom.  
  
She looks at herself in the mirror and almost laughs out loud. She looks completely wrecked, her hair coming out of the braid it was in and her neck covered in bite marks. Splashing some water on her face, she brushes her teeth and heads to the kitchen for some water.  
  
Her phone sits abandoned on the kitchen counter, and she cracks up as she checks her notifications. Carla has texted her three times, going from _“Pierre is hot, might take home”_ to _“ok he’s gone now if you want to call me to talk about your little problem”_ and finally, at one in the morning, _“glad you’re having fun!! get it gurlll”_ — Lu knows she’s completely giving herself away by replying at five am, but she still sends back the heart eyes emoji.  
  
Every single muscle in her body hurts, but she’s barely even noticing because she feels giddy with excitement for what’s to come.  
  
She takes her glass of water over to her favorite armchair in the living room and watches the sun come up over the city. She hears footsteps behind her at some point and turns around to see Valerio tiptoeing over to her, a sleepy grin on his face. He’s naked, aside from the black pair of briefs he’s wearing, and she seriously wonders how she can be thinking about taking them off of him right now when her entire body still hurts from last night.  
  
Getting up, she lets him sit down on the armchair first and smiles when he pulls her down across his lap.  
  
“Morning,” he says and kisses her, brief. She finds she likes how they’ve moved on from passionate, frenzied kissing at all times — of course, she loves that, but the casual, brief touch of his lips feels different. Like he’s not worried about her changing her mind or not getting the chance to do this again. It feels like they’re more… settled.  
  
She rests her forehead against his and smiles. “Hi.”  
  
He plays with what’s left of her braid. “Last night was fun,” he says, and she grins.  
  
“It was ridiculously hot, you mean,” her hand has dipped down to play with the waistband of his briefs, and really, she doesn’t know what’s gotten into her. Her legs barely work as-is.  
  
He kisses her in response. "Fuck yeah." She rests a hand on his bicep and the other at the back of his neck, kissing him lazily. "What now?"  


Lu kisses a line from his lips to the hinge of his jaw, licking the shell of his ear teasingly. "Again."  
  
He laughs at her but she sees the heat in his eyes, knows he’s definitely more than willing to go for a repeat performance. (Or something like that — she has all these new ideas for things she wants to try.) When she tries to kiss him again he pushes her away and makes her get up, grabs her hand as they walk back towards the bedroom.  
  
“Let’s wake up Polo,” he says, and when they walk in to find Polo sitting back against the pillows, naked, like he was expecting them, Lu finds herself smiling.  
  
Weekend mornings were always her favorite, anyway.  
  
**  
  
They settle into a new kind of routine, now that Valerio is around. Polo and Lu still have classes, though she feels like he’s a lot less committed to school than she is, and most of his classes are in the afternoon, which is just unfair. Lu has a ton of studying to do, but thankfully has a solid study group to cram with, even if she doesn't love pulling all-nighters in the library to finish research essays on time.  
  
The three of them still hang out with their respective friends, sometimes bringing each other along, sometimes splitting off into random pairs and she loves getting one on one time with each of them — she's sure they feel the same.  
  
Valerio is doing his best to find the most comprehensive (his words, not hers) Bikram yoga class in town and declares he won’t leave London until he’s found it. When he casually mentions this over dinner, both Polo and Lu laugh and give him a look. They know he’s not leaving, anyway.  
  
It’s domestic in the best way possible, and Lu sort of wonders when her luck will change. She’s pretty sure she’s used up most of it at this point.  
  
**  
  
They go to a costume party the weekend after Halloween because Lu had an early class the day after the 31st. She wants the boys to dress up as Ron and Harry, while she dons a Gryffindor skirt and unruly curls, but Valerio refuses. (“I’m more of a Slytherin myself,” he says, and she rolls her eyes at him. He’s a total Gryffindor, but she’ll let him have this if it makes him feel cooler.) Neither of them is ginger, and Valerio much prefers Draco, so in the end their rendition of the infamous Harry Potter trio is a little bit of an alternative version.  
  
The morning after, they all sleep in late and convince Polo to make breakfast for them. (Valerio and Lu can be very persuasive, especially when they team up.)  
  
They’re in the kitchen, Lu and Val sitting at the breakfast bar sipping their choice of tea and coffee, while Polo makes French toast.  
  
Lu nudges Val with her shoulder, asks, “What do you want to do for your birthday?” and laughs because he’s only got three days to figure something out.  
  
Valerio is turning 20, and Polo’s already turned 19 in August. She kinda likes how their ages line up like that; 18, 19, 20.  


Valerio doesn’t miss a beat. “Go to a trampoline park.” 

Across the kitchen, Polo laughs as he flips off the stove. “Aren’t you a little too old for that?” 

Valerio walks up behind Polo and leans down to kiss his neck. “It’s a good thing I’ve got you two to keep me young, then,” he murmurs and catches Lu’s eye across the room. 

Neither Polo nor Lu is very good at saying no to Valerio, so of course they find themselves at a venue in Islington three days later, waiting in line with at least two full classes of school-aged children.  
  
Five minutes in, Lu realizes jumping on a trampoline is hard, and wonders if she might need to start working out again. (Apparently, binge drinking and walking home at odd hours of the night isn’t actually a good workout; who knew?) Val’s energy knows no bounds, and his excited grin is sort of infectious, so Lu jumps through the pain, playing a game of trampoline basketball with the boys.  
  
Val makes her and Polo race on the Ninja Warrior track, and because Lu is too competitive for her own good, she makes it up the final hurdle several seconds before Polo. She’s ready to pass out, but doesn’t let it show.  
  
“Nice try, loser,” she says when he comes over and high fives her. “Good game. I mean, you lost, but hey — you put up a good fight.”  
  
He pushes her into the foam pit and she curses his name as she tries to climb out.  
  
The leave an hour later and she can already tell every single muscle in her body will be sore tomorrow. Worst idea _ever_.  
  
“What are you doing?” Valerio asks when he sees her holding her phone to her ear as they walk to the nearest tube station.  
  
“Cancelling our dinner reservations,” she says, rolling her eyes when no one picks up the phone at the restaurant. “I know it’s your birthday, but I am not leaving the house again today.”  
  
Next to her, Polo laughs. “I’m sure we can think of other ways to make it up to him,” he muses and Lu grins at him.  
  
“That sounds like a pretty good way to spend my birthday,” Valerio agrees and pulls her closer as they walk.  
  
Lu scoffs, but doesn’t really mean it. “Great, I’m glad all of your birthday plans revolve around me not being able to walk straight for a week.”  
  
It's not a full week, really. Maybe she's in better shape than she thought. 

  
**  
  
It’s a cloudy Saturday morning in November and the three of them decide to go on a little stroll through the city, because there are always new places to be discovered. Predictably, they end up at Spitalfields Market, because Lu loves the antique market, the food trucks, and the little artisanal donut place where the owner with a heavy German accent always smiles at her when she changes her mind halfway through her order and adds an extra Nutella donut.  


Lu is groggily clinging to Valerio’s arm, and wonders why the hell neither of the boys thought it was a good idea to make her a coffee before leaving the house. Val drinks tea, not coffee, and Polo is an early riser so she figures she simply missed out on caffeine because she slept in.  
  
Lack of caffeine makes her contemplative.  
  
“What are we doing, Val?” They’re both watching Polo from afar as he waits in line for coffee in the crowded market hall. (That’s one of the things she likes least about London; everything is always crowded.) Val grabs her hand reassuringly, so she knows he gets that she’s not talking about them being here right now.  
  
Sometimes, the way she feels just watching them do the simplest things for her — like getting into an impossibly long line to get her a coffee — still overwhelms her. She likes them both _so_ much.  
  
“We’re living la vida loca,” he teases, pulling her into his chest a little bit, her head still facing towards the coffee truck so she can keep an eye on Polo. She laughs and pushes at his chest, and feels him breathe in deep. “Who cares, anyway?”  
  
Softly, she supposes, “Literally everyone else in the universe?” and is kind of afraid to hear his answer.  


He shrugs. “Who says we need to be like anyone else?”  


Lu just smiles, leans her head on his shoulder, and listens to his breathing.  
  
(It would be nice if things were as simple as they seem when Val breaks them down.)

Polo finally comes back with an iced coffee for her and grins when he hands it over. “With an extra shot of espresso,” he says, and she pecks his lips, just because. “Don’t want you to murder us when the caffeine withdrawal kicks in.” 

All in all, Lu supposes Val might be right. Maybe they don’t need to be like anyone else. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHOOPS. So that happened! Too much? Not enough? Let me know.


	5. Chapter 5

  
If Lu wasn’t used to Val being a careless idiot at basically all times, she’s pretty sure she would kill him. If the opportunity presented itself, and some guy with access to a guillotine came up to her and asked if she had any thoughts on who deserved to get their head cut off, she would absolutely give him Valerio’s name.  
  
It’s not even that he’s consciously fucked something up and actively plotted against her, he just doesn’t _think_ sometimes and it drives her up the wall.  
  
For obvious reasons, she’s trying not to show off the fact that she’s in a polyamorous relationship with her fucking half brother and her best friend’s ex-boyfriend on social media. The Polo thing would be enough to fuel months of hushed whispers and gossip from her former classmates, as well as other people she knows in Madrid, but the Valerio aspect of it all? She doesn’t even want to think about it.  
  
So when Valerio, always a fan of bizarre social media content, posts a picture of her and Polo asleep together to his Instagram story, she nearly fucking murders him. It’s a very tasteful picture, and the white sheet drapes over her body just right to ensure she isn’t naked for all of Val’s followers to see, but still. Her face isn’t even visible as it’s buried against Polo’s chest, but anyone who knows her will instantly recognize the girl in the picture as Lu. Her tiny red tattoo peaks out over the sheet, just barely, and she hasn’t even been on Instagram yet today when she gets texts from Carla, Omar and Nadia about it. _Great.  
_  
If he hadn’t posted it for all the world to see, she’d honestly think it’s a really good picture, but now she’s just livid. She gets home from class, throws her bag and coat down next to the door, and marches into the kitchen, where she can hear the boys joking around. Polo smiles at her when he sees her walk in, then quickly recognizes the irritated look on her face and frowns.  
  
Moving over to Val, he waves at her when he sees her in his peripheral vision, a lazy smile on his lips. It’s like that obnoxious (okay, _cute_ ) smile flips a switch in her brain, because before she knows it she slaps him, hard, the sound of it echoing in the hollow room.  
  
She hears Polo go, “Whoa,” behind her, and doesn’t turn around to dignify that sound with a response.  
  
Valerio doesn’t really react, just looks at her expectantly. They’ve always fought like this, have both dealt their fair share of physical blows over the course of their lives, and so he meets her eyes and raises a brow in question. It makes her want to slap him again.  
  
“Next time you feel the need to populate your Instagram feed with artsy shots of my naked back, maybe use your fucking brain before you hit ‘post’,” she says, her voice low.  
  
Polo chimes in, “Oh, I like that picture,” and she turns around to glare at him, because he really needs to stay out of this if he doesn’t want to get slapped, too.  
  
“Polo,” she says sweetly, kind of agitated, and licks her lips. “Piece of advice? You do not want to get in the middle of this. If you have an opinion, you keep it to yourself. You’re Switzerland — you’re not gonna come out and oppose Hitler, but you’re also not gonna send _all_ of the Jews on your doorstep away in 1934, alright?”  
  
He looks at her like he’s alarmed at that analogy, but then he nods and swallows. “I’m just gonna go to our room,” Lu kind of smiles when he says the word ‘our’ — the novelty of that isn’t gonna wear off anytime soon. He fixes both of them with a look. “Do not — I repeat — do not kill each other, okay?” If she wasn’t so fucking pissed at Val, she’d probably laugh, but she just nods instead.  
  
He’s braver than she thought, because he walks over to peck her on the lips, then does the same to Val as he passes him. She still thinks her Switzerland analogy is perfectly accurate.  
  
When Polo is gone, she walks over to the fridge and pours herself a glass of chilled white wine.  
  
Valerio still hasn’t said a word to her, and she’s glad, because she’s not sure she’s above slapping him again just yet.  
  
Taking a long drag of wine, she stares out the window and lets the silence linger around them. She fixes him with a glare and sighs. “Okay, you may speak.”  
  
He looks like he kind of wants to laugh at that remark, but knows better than to provoke her right now. Good.  
  
“What’s wrong with the picture,” he asks, sort of flippantly, and she’s instantly ready to scream at him again, but decides to let him finish. “It’s not like I’m in it.”  
  
Well, yeah, thank god for that. Thank god he has enough common sense to not just post naked selfies of the three of them together. Lu is glad he’s at least somewhat aware of how delicate this whole thing they’re trying to pull off here is.  
  
Still, she can’t help but raise her voice at him. “Are you really that dense? Do you genuinely not understand why I don’t want people to know?”  
  
She walks over to him then, angrily grabs his neck and pulls him towards her. He kisses her like a question, sort of like he’s asking if this is what she wants, and she leans in to claim his lips, all finesse thrown out the window.  
  
This isn’t new, either — resolving a fight with angry touches rather than words, and he seems to be game, if the way he roughly pulls down the zipper of her dress is any indication. 

She leaves Valerio in the kitchen after, steals his shirt, and makes her way to Polo’s room. When she opens the door and sees him sitting on her side of the bed, wearing noise-canceling headphones and reading a book, she can’t help but smile. The smile he shoots her is careful, like he’s trying to gauge her reaction and she feels a little bad about it. 

“I’m sorry,” she hears herself say, and sort of wonders when she’s ever actually apologized to anyone for anything before. It’s like Polo’s sensitive nature is rubbing off on her. 

He puts an arm around her when she sits down next to him. “Are you still mad at Val because of the picture?” 

“It’s not about the stupid picture,” Lu says, quiet. “It’s about what it represents.” 

He laughs and runs a hand through her hair. “All I saw was two very gorgeous people sleeping peacefully.” The kiss he drops on the crown of her head is light and oddly comforting. 

Lu has had enough of being angry and serious. “Did anyone text you about it? Because my inbox was full of our supposed friends wanting details of our scandalous affair.” 

“Not really,” Polo laughs, and she turns in his embrace to look at him. “Guzmán asked what the picture was about and I just told him we fell asleep studying.” 

That gets a chuckle out of Lu. “Do you always study naked?” Polo lets his hand fall to her hip under Valerio’s shirt and nods.

“You’ve just never seen me study before,” he suggests. 

Lu scrunches up her nose and runs a hand down his cheek. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have skipped out on all those study dates you and Guzmán used to invite us to in favor of shopping with Carla.” 

He kisses her then, soft and comforting, and she lets herself melt into it a little. When she tries to deepen the kiss and pulls on his shirt, he laughs and shakes his head. “Let’s just do this,” he says and he sounds so sincere, so caring, she can’t help but nod. 

Valerio comes in when she’s already half asleep later, quietly talks to Polo about the TV show they’re both watching, and she drifts off almost instantly, listening to their comforting voices. Being angry is exhausting. 

Polo sleeps in between them that night, and she’s sort of grateful she didn’t have to resort to sleeping by herself instead. It feels good to be held. 

(But she’s still mad. Kind of.) 

  
**

“Any plans for the weekend?” Leah takes a bite of her pasta. 

They’re having lunch together after class on a Friday, and Lu is more than ready to not think about school for two full days. Worrying about keeping up with classwork on top of the tense situation at home had been exhausting, and it’s really only day two of their fight, which isn’t really a fight, because neither of them wants to actually put the reason she’s mad into words. 

So yeah, she definitely earned this carbonara she’s twirling around her fork. It has ‘carb’ in the name and it’s exactly what she needs right now. 

“We’re trying this new restaurant tonight,” she says. 

“Oh, is this another weird Asian fusion place Valerio found?” 

Lu sighs and tries not to look too bothered. “No, it’s just me and Polo.” 

Of course, Leah picks up on her weird tone. Lu should really consider befriending people who don’t see right through her; it’s a little annoying sometimes. “Trouble in paradise?” 

Ugh. She really doesn’t want to get into it. Anyone who doesn’t know about her and Val probably wouldn’t understand. 

“We’ve been... fighting,” she decides on. “Or well, I have. He’s just been stubbornly refusing to talk about it.” Which isn’t really true, because it’s not like she’s been very forthcoming about why she’s mad, but hey — this is her version of the story, okay? 

Leah cocks her brow at her. “Fighting about what?” And well, isn’t that a loaded question? 

“About that stupid picture he posted of me and Polo,” she rolls her eyes for good measure. “He just doesn’t understand why I’m bothered by it.” 

A waiter comes over then, and Lu is kind of glad for the interruption. She orders tiramisu and a glass of wine because she deserves it. 

“If it helps, I thought it was a great picture,” Leah takes a sip of her wine. “But I gather this isn’t really about the aesthetic.” 

“Is it so wrong that I don’t want every single judgmental person we went to school with to know about us? I’m just trying to avoid all the gossip and bullshit rumors.” 

The blonde nods in agreement.

“So you’re fighting but you’re still sleeping in the same bed?” Lu shrugs, unfazed, and Leah laughs. “Poor Polo.” 

Lu scoffs. “Not like he’s missing out on anything because of this...” 

“What, you’re not talking to Valerio but you’re all still hooking up?” When Lu avoids her eyes, she laughs. Well. Frankly, she doesn’t see why she should be missing out on sex, just because Valerio is too stubborn to apologize to her.  
  
She decides to change the subject instead. “Are we still going to that party at Printworks tomorrow?”  
  
Leah laughs. “Absolutely. Alcohol, DnB, and you trying to drink away your anger? What could go wrong?”  
  
Lu can’t help but smile. The idea of getting drunk to forget all about this stupid fight sounds perfect right now.  


**  
  
Carla calls her that night, as she’s just getting out of the shower. Except Lu doesn’t get to her phone in time, so instead she walks out to find Polo on the couch, talking to her on FaceTime, and wonders when that became a normal occurrence in her life. She decides to eavesdrop a little before making her presence known. “No, she’s fine,” she hears Polo say, except anyone who’s known him for longer than maybe a week would be able to tell he’s just being polite.  
  
Polo’s an idiot, so of course he’s not wearing headphones, and she can hear everything Carla is saying. “I kind of figured she’s sulking because of that Instagram picture.” Carla says, and Polo sort of laughs.  
  
“You know, I wish my best friend cared enough to call me every time someone uploaded an unflattering picture of me to Instagram.” Lu almost yells then, because hey, the picture is cute!  
  
Carla sounds amused. “It’s a cute picture,” Good, Lu thinks, at least that’s settled. “And your only two friends outside of the people you’re sleeping with are either clueless and bitter about their breakup or too busy with their boyfriend.” 

That’s news to Lu. She should probably talk to Nadia at some point to find out what happened. How come Carla knows about this and she doesn’t? Lu vows to do better at keeping up with these things.  
  
Polo sighs, then looks over his shoulder and spots her. “Lovely catching up, Carla, but I think the person you actually wanted to speak to is available now,” Lu rolls her eyes and walks over to him, taking the phone from his hands. She locks herself in her room and smiles at Carla. 

“What’s up? How’s Pierre?” 

Carla rolls her eyes. “Heartbroken because I refuse to call him back, but that’s not why I’m calling and you know it.” 

Lu groans. Ugh, okay, fine. Maybe she shouldn’t have ignored her texts for two days straight.

By the end of the call, Carla has convinced her to consider not being mad at Valerio anymore, though Lu loves a good grudge and decides to hold it for a little while longer. It’s not like it will kill him, and she’s not ready to be over this yet. 

**  
  
They do finally make up a few days later, when Polo is out with his weird film club friends, and Lu realizes she’s now more mad at herself for holding a grudge than she is at Valerio for doing what he did.  
  
She gets a little dressed up for him, lights a few candles and pours two glasses of wine in her bedroom, and laughs when he tells her she didn't have to put effort into seducing him.

She pins his wrists to the bed, grinds against his thigh and says, "This isn't even effort, Val. It's just wine and lingerie." He’s kind of just staring at her in the best way possible, like he’s wondering what effort would look like. Christ. It’s like he forgot what she’s capable of. Why do people keep doing that? "Maybe if you weren't so easy—" She reaches down and presses her hand against his crotch. “— I'd be forced to bring my A game."  
  
The smirk on his lips makes her feel really, really good. 

"Can I play hard to get?"

She laughs and lets go of his hands, smiling when he runs them all over her, like he doesn't know where to touch her first. "Not tonight," she says, and it sounds like a serious command, and really, he better be okay with that.  
  
Later, he’s got her on her back and he’s being tantalizingly gentle with her. It’s way too much, the intimacy of it all, and Lu is dying for him to finally _really_ touch her. He looks at her with brown eyes that mirror her own, his lips brushing the apple of her cheek and she gives him a little encouraging smile.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and the genuine way he says it nearly makes her cry. She pulls him closer and kisses him, like an apology of her own.  
  
“You don’t have to be,” she settles on, then moves so she’s on top of him. “You didn’t do anything.”  
  
They sleep in her bed that night, and Polo apparently doesn’t want to disturb them, just laughs and shows her a picture he took of them sleeping like that over breakfast in the morning. “I’d post it on Instagram, but something tells me that wouldn’t go over well,” he jokes, and she punches his shoulder and rolls her eyes. It’s a really nice picture.  
  
She thinks she loves both of these idiots enough to put up with their teasing.  
  
**  
  
Now that she’s back on track in terms of not feeling the need to murder one of the two men she’s living and sleeping with, Lu has time to focus her energy on other things. That’s how she finds herself sitting in her room on a Thursday night, eating Ben and Jerry’s straight from the tub, as she talks to Nadia on FaceTime.  
  
She feels like a shitty friend for not hearing about Nadia’s breakup until now, but Nadia assures her she’s fine, better than fine even.  
  
“Well, now I can finally stop holding back and insult Guzmán to your face,” Lu muses, and Nadia throws her head back and laughs. She looks more relaxed and comfortable than Lu has ever seen her.  
  
There’s a mischievous look on her face when she finally stops laughing. “Are we gonna talk about you and Polo, or is that off the table?”  
  
Lu figures there’s no harm in telling her a little bit of an abridged version of what’s going on — minus the Valerio aspect, of course, because even though the girl knows more than Lu would like about _that_ , she’s still pretty intent on keeping this a secret.  
  
But Nadia isn’t oblivious, so after Lu’s brief explanation of how they hooked up a few times over the summer and then moved in together, she gives her this little look, asks, “And Valerio too, right?” And the casual way she says it makes Lu nod and smile a little.  
  
“As long as you’re happy…” Nadia trails off, and Lu feels the need to make an over the top joke to change the subject, but really, she's just grateful.  
  
Three people know about her relationship now, and none of them have judged her too harshly for it. ( _Fine_ , one of them isn’t quite clued in on the Valerio part of the equation, but still.)  
  
She wonders if it's time to stop judging herself for it.  
  
**  
  
Lu doesn't mean to end up at this party, but it's the middle of the term and that is apparently a reason for all the big on-campus societies to get drunk together. Everyone's ready to party now that they've settled in, and this girl in her elective Anthropology class invites her. (They briefly bonded over anthropology being the study of man, and how neither of them understands men, and it was a good enough reason for Lu to agree to go.)  
  
Polo and Valerio have a date tonight — they’ve both been super excited about going up to the top floor of the Shard for cocktails all week — and Lu is cool with that, and honestly, getting drunk seems like a pretty good alternative to just sitting at home alone and then hearing them have sex when they get back from dinner. She's totally fine with not being included every time they go out alone (they all are) but that doesn't make it easy, per se.  


In the end, she drinks too much. Everyone does, so it's not a big deal. They play beer pong, which she always thought she was good at, but apparently really isn't, and she ends up nearly throwing up during. This guy she recognizes from a class they share, or maybe another party, helps her up off the couch and offers to get her some water, and he’s so blatant, she can tell he’s hitting on her even though she's wasted. It’s that obvious.  
  
He's not nearly as drunk as she is, and he lifts her up onto the kitchen counter of this student halls building the party is at and feeds her crackers and water and asks her a bunch of questions, keeps her talking and calls her adorable.  


Lu hates being called adorable, or cute, or any other adjective that doesn’t correlate with fierce.  


"I have a boyfriend," she says randomly, because that’s probably important. He doesn't respond to that at all and he doesn't take his hands off her thighs. She’s in a tiny leather skirt, because she felt like wearing it, so you can imagine how much skin he's touching right now. "His name is Polo."  


“Oh yeah? Where is he tonight?" Ugh. She knows this game. Men are the fucking worst.  
  
Lu is drunk enough to be bold, though. “With my other boyfriend.”  
  
The guy makes a snide comment about her being promiscuous enough to have two boyfriends, and she laughs in his face. It’s cute of him to assume she’d be shitty enough to brag about cheating. She doesn’t bother correcting him because she doesn’t give a fuck about what this rando thinks of her.  
  
He has the fucking nerve to try and slip a hand under her skirt, and she instantly hops off the counter and slips away. She may be drunk, but she’s not gonna let this guy push her around.  
  
As she’s walking away from him, she grabs her phone and dials Leah’s number without even thinking about it. She’s pretty sure Leah mentioned going to a party too, because there’s tons of them tonight, and maybe they can meet up somewhere so Lu won’t have to be near this creep anymore.  
  
She picks up on the third ring, and there’s so much background noise, Lu can’t make out anything she’s saying. “I’m at Hawkridge House, where are you?” She yells, and hopes it’s audible.  
  
Leah says something about Astor, which she knows is the dorm this guy she’s sort of into lives in, and Lu decides to go. “I’ll text you, okay?” There’s no point shouting into the phone any further, so she hangs up and orders an Uber. She could probably take a bus, too, but she doesn’t trust herself with that. The paranoid part of her is kind of worried about having this guy follow her, so she waits inside until she gets an Uber notification saying her ride is outside and practically runs to the car.  
  
Leah is outside the building waiting for her when she gets out of the Uber, and she’s never been more relieved to see a familiar face. The hug she engulfs her in is ridiculously enthusiastic, but she’s drunk and doesn’t even care.  
  
“Jesus,” Leah murmurs as they embrace. “What the hell did you drink?”  
  
Lu laughs a little and considers the question. “A little bit of everything,” she frowns, remembering the beer pong game. “A lot of beer.”  
  
The blonde laughs at that. “You hate beer.”  
  
Lu nods and loops her arm through Leah’s and starts walking. “Can we get food?”  
  
“Yeah, if we don’t get some carbs in you, you might die,” Leah jokes, and Lu sort of rolls her eyes at her.  
  
They sit upstairs at a McDonald’s with a cool view, along with about 300 other drunk people, and Lu’s chowing down a Big Mac when she suddenly remembers her earlier encounter and chuckles a little.  
  
“I told this dick at the party I was at that I have a boyfriend,” she says, and Leah looks like she’s waiting for the rest of the story, like that’s not enough to be funny. “I’ve never called him that before.”  
  
“And let me guess, he obviously asked where this boyfriend of yours is tonight, right?” When Lu nods, Leah rolls her eyes. “Fucking men. What did you say?”  
  
The giggle Lu lets out is partly because she’s drunk, but also because she’s remembering the encounter. “I said he’s with my other boyfriend.”  
  
Leah sort of chokes on the coke she’s drinking and finally holds her hand up for a fist bump when she’s back to being able to breathe.  
  
The ending to the night is almost worth the hangover in the morning.  
  
The boys are both mostly naked and kissing in the living room when she finally stumbles home an hour later, and they instantly break apart and come over to help her out of her shoes and coat. Which, she’s not _that_ drunk, alright? But it’s cute of them. She probably just interrupted foreplay and they're still coming over to help. So _chivalrous_.  
  
She leans in to kiss Valerio first, then Polo, and groans when they whisper to each other, saying something about her needing to sleep. She doesn’t want to sleep yet. But then they help her sit down on their bed, and she sort of falls back against it, tips her head back and closes her eyes. That makes everything spin, so she opens them again and sees the boys — her boys — holding hands and kind of smiling down at her.  
  
It’s almost enough for her to drunkenly tell them she loves them. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s thought it.  
  
**  
  
November drags on, and it’s rainy and grey and miserable, for the most part. Lu finally understands why people look at her like she’s weird when she tells them she willingly left Spain for London — she really misses the sun. Fall fashion is great and all, but the lack of vitamin D is really getting to her.  
  
She gets home from class to find Valerio packing a bag in her bedroom one day, and grabs him from behind to ask about it.  
  
“Two week trip to the Highlands,” he says, like that’s just a normal thing to do in the middle of this miserable November weather, but she’s known Valerio for too long to still be surprised by things like this. He turns her around and brushes his thumb over her lips, like he wants to erase the frown from it, but she’s not in the mood.  
  
“Who are you going with?” She sort of leans against him, hides her face against his chest and he laughs, like he expected the question. She’s not jealous, alright? But she thinks she deserves to know.  
  
“Some people I met in France,” he says, and she pushes at his chest because that’s obviously not a good enough answer. “What, do you want a list of names?” When he sits down on the bed, sort of pulling her with him, she lands in his lap and nods.  
  
“Any cute girls?” The lazy smirk on his lips gives her pause. “Or boys?” Because ugh, she might have to worry about that, too.  
  
He shakes his head slowly, like the mere question is stupid, then grins at her. “Well, what happens in Scotland stays in Scotland, right?”  
  
Ugh. He’s the worst. He knows, obviously. He’s just teasing her. Provoking her. Wants her to say things out loud. Which, god, maybe that’s how they got here, in the end — by not just saying things.   
  
“Not quite what I had in mind,” Her hands slip under his shirt without even meaning to; she just can’t not do that when he’s right there, and she now knows he’ll be gone for a while. She could just tell him, she thinks, tell him she wants this to mean something. “Not what I want, anyway.”  
  
“Well, what do you want?” he asks, direct, and she shifts her hips just the slightest bit on top of him. He takes a breath.  
  
And really, maybe she should try and use her words.

“Lots of things.” Valerio smoothes his thumb over her jawline. ”Everything.” She leans into his touch, feels herself smile when he slowly brushes his hand over her cheek. “You.”  
  
The way he groans and whispers her name is all the affirmation Lu needs.  
  
He leaves the next morning, and coming home to an empty apartment after class sort of… sucks.  
  
**  
  
Being alone with Polo again is nice, too, though. Kind of like hitting the reset button and going back to two months ago, when they started classes. They spend the entire first weekend after Val leaves at home, just watching movies and eating good food and drinking too much wine. On Saturday night, they head to the communal gym in their building because it has a sauna, and Lu thinks sweating out some of the toxins and wine in her body is a great idea. 

She gets too hot almost immediately, and Polo makes fun of her for it, says he told her so as he pokes her naked side. 

“Stay away from me,” she says, grinning. “I don’t need your body heat to make this any worse.”  
  
Of course, she should know better than to bait him like that. He’s got his arms around her in an instant, clinging to her sweaty back. Gross.  
  
They take a cold shower together after, which feels amazing, and then Lu wants to watch a gory slasher movie — her favorite thing to do to unwind — while Polo is in the mood for a documentary, so they compromise and watch Conversations with a Killer in bed, her head growing heavier on his shoulder as she drifts off halfway through the second episode.  
  
In the morning, she finds him in the kitchen making breakfast for them and the sight of him like that is almost enough for her to do something stupid, like tell him she loves him. Which she probably does, but they haven’t talked about feelings and she sure as hell won’t bring that up first. The last time she confessed her love to someone it was Guzmán, who broke up with her the same day, so — yeah. She’s not making that mistake again anytime soon.  
  
Polo wordlessly motions for her to come in and sit down, and there’s a spatula in his hand and some pancake batter sticking to his bare chest as he hums along to a random Jack Johnson song and Lu kind of has to bite her lip to stop herself from grinning wide. A strange smile crosses his mouth and she’s stepping towards him, closer.  
  
She's about to say something, something profound and littered with meaning, when she catches a few lines of the song playing and scrunches up her nose, laughing. “Are you listening to Banana Pancakes while you’re making pancakes?” He nods sheepishly and pulls her closer, and really, he is such a fucking dork.   
  
God, she’s ridiculously into this side of him. This side and every other side, probably.  
  
**  
  
Valerio goes off the grid for the entire two-week trip, just leaves his phone in London, and if Lu didn’t know him well enough to know he’s crafty and quick on his feet, she’d worry about him getting lost or stranded somewhere, with no way to call help.  
  
There’s two postcards in the mail a few days after he left, one for her and one for Polo, and she wishes there was a return address on them so she could reply. She misses talking to him.  
  
Her card is signed “Love, Val” and she feels her heart flutter just a little when she first reads it. It shouldn’t be this big of a deal to see that word written in his messy, lazy scrawl, but she feels giddy with the realization of it anyway.  
  
Maybe someday they’ll talk about this. There may be hope for them yet.  
  
**  
  
Guzmán calls Polo and says something about needing to get away, and before Lu even really knows what’s happening, he’s booked flights and Polo tells her he’ll be in town for a long weekend — _next_ weekend — and, “Can he stay in your room?”  
  
Of course she says yes. How could she not? She knows about the complicated history the boys share, and no matter the hard feelings that might still exist between her and Guzmán, she knows he’s important to Polo, which makes him important to her. It’s that simple, really.  
  
That doesn’t mean she looks forward to having him here, in their space, where he will undoubtedly quickly pick up on the fact that Lu and Polo sleep in the same bed and generally aren’t just friends. She doesn’t want to have to deal with that.  
  
He gets in on a Thursday afternoon, and they go out for dinner near their place to avoid a long walk back later. On Friday, Lu has class but Polo doesn’t, so Polo handles most of the sightseeing stuff. He texts her a picture of them on the London Eye, and Lu smiles as she types out a reply, telling them to have fun.  
  
She tells Leah her ex is in town as they’re having coffee after class, and the blonde gets super into the idea of meeting him. "Your life is literally ridiculous," she tells her when Lu explains that Polo and Guzmán have been best friends on and off since grade school. "So fucking incestuous, your group of friends." It takes everything in her not to cringe at the blonde's use of that word.  
  
Lu wouldn’t really mind having a buffer person with them tonight, to avoid having nostalgia take over her weekend completely, so she invites her over for drinks. Polo seems to think that’s a good idea, says he’ll text a few of his friends from school as well, and before she knows it, she’s in their living room entertaining a small number of guests, all of whom are staring at the insane view from their apartment.  
  
At one point, she’s talking to Polo quietly in a corner, just sort of checking in, and she catches Guzmán watching them, a weird expression on his face.  
  
“So it’s true, then,” Guzmán says when he finds her in the kitchen pouring herself another drink of whiskey a little later. He laughs, sort of dry, and it instantly does something to her — triggers a memory of when he used to get like this while he was stringing her along and blamed _her_ for his cheating. “You and Polo have got to be the weirdest match I’ve ever seen.”  
  
They’re not on bad terms, they just simply haven’t had a real reason to interact recently. It’s sort of fucked up that he wants to act like he knows anything about her love life.  


“Oh, stop it.” She’s short with him on purpose, because if she isn’t careful, she might make a scene. Whiskey tends to make her really mean and she doesn't generally need help with that.  


“No.” She squares her shoulders and glares at him. “I’m serious. He’s into you.”  


Lu feels bold, asks, “Why do you care?”  
  
He takes a step towards her. “You’re my friends. I want you to be happy.”  
  
“Well, I am happy,” she says, shooting him a glare.  
  
“Come on, Lu,” Guzmán scoffs, and she’s pissed all of a sudden. Pissed at him for sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong and acting like he has any right to talk to her about this. Extra pissed that he’s suggesting her relationship, which he knows nothing about, isn’t a happy one. How dare he act like he knows her well enough to care? “We both know this isn’t what you want.”  
  
“What?” Yeah, she’s defensive. That was a super rude thing to say, and it’s not true. She lowers her voice and leans in to whisper in his ear. “Are you finding it hard to believe a girl could be happy without having anything to do with you?”  
  
Her words sting, she knows that much, because she sees his face change from inquisitory to stoic. She knows for a fact Nadia broke up with him a few weeks ago, knows it was because they kept fighting over them leading separate lives because the girl told her so. It doesn’t take a genius to know that means he couldn’t handle her thriving out there in New York on her own.  
  
She takes a sip of her drink, smiles at him, and joins everyone else in the living room again.  
  
When Guzmán walks back out a few minutes later, she makes a point of moving a little closer to Polo, and he kisses her cheek instinctively. The way he’s casually affectionate with her is one of Lu’s favorite things in the world.  
  
Lu is _very_ happy, thank you very much.  
  
**  
  
“You should apologize to Guzmán”, Polo tells her the next day, when they’re in the kitchen having breakfast while Guzmán is taking a shower and she genuinely almost slaps him.  
  
“Are you fucking serious?”  
  
He sighs, and Lu can tell from the look on his face that he’s currently regretting bringing this up before she’s finished her first coffee of the day. Which he should be, but coffee has nothing to do with the rage that blossoms in her chest.  
  
“He was trying to be supportive,” Polo says, and Lu sort of laughs in his face. Poor Polo can be so gullible sometimes, completely blind to how cunning his supposed friend really is.  
  
“He was trying to be a dick,” she replies, then takes a big sip of her coffee. She’s too proud to tell him about how much it pissed her off to have Guzmán insinuate Polo isn’t a worthwhile option. “Do you even know what he said?”  
  
Polo shakes his head slowly, and Lu decides to be an adult about this. There’s no point telling him now, not when Guzmán is in town for another two days and it would make things worse.  
  
“I will be civil,” she declares. “But I will not apologize. He should be the one doing that.”  
  
Polo sort of nods, takes a deep breath like he’s resigned to his fate, and she wonders when her flair for theatrics rubbed off on him.  
  
The rest of the weekend passes without incident, and when they finally get back from walking Guzmán to the train on Sunday, Lu lets out a breath she didn’t know she’s been holding.  
  
“What did he say?” Polo asks her later that night, his hand on her naked back as he lightly brushes over her skin. Of course, this has been bothering him, too.  
  
She thinks about lying, or pretending to be asleep. Anything to avoid having to talk about this. For someone who enjoys talking as much as she does, she's surprisingly inept at it when it comes to important conversations. “He told me he doesn’t believe I’m happy with you,” she says. Polo chuckles, like he’s surprised to hear that but also sort of annoyed. She wonders when she came to know him well enough to pick up on these nuances.  
  
“And I told him, very plainly, that I _am_ happy and he can fuck off,” she smirks.  
  
The way he kisses her tells her all she needs to know. But Polo wouldn’t be Polo if he didn’t feel the need to acknowledge this another way, too.  
  
“It’s almost like we’re ‘Better Together’,” he says, then starts humming another one of the stupid Jack Johnson songs she’s constantly catching him sing in the shower. Groaning, she punches his shoulder, then lets him pull her closer.  
  
Lu presses herself against him and runs her hand over his cheek gently.  
  
She loves him a little more for this, too. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *SIGHS* I love them so much, like, I can't even.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fluff followed by angst followed by fluff. Bake at 320° for 15 minutes and let rest overnight for optimal cheesiness.

In the end, Polo is the one to get her to talk about feelings, although she’s technically the one who brings it up. They go out for dinner at his insistence, to this Japanese-Brazilian fusion place with insane views over the city, the kind of views where the food could be absolutely terrible and people would still happily drop money on it just to get to see London in all its glory. It’s absolutely awe-inspiring, and a great reminder of why she loves this rainy, cold city. Really, she thinks, it’s the kind of place where people in movies go to propose to the love of their lives.  
  
(Not that she’s even remotely thinking about getting married. It’s just easy to make that comparison when you’re surrounded by gorgeous, attractive couples eating expensive sushi.)  
  
It’s the kind of place Valerio would pretend to hate, she thinks, so she’s glad he’s not here to make snide remarks about the milieu. It’s nice to be able to just bask in the uppity nature of it all without having to acknowledge it. She’s a born and raised snob; leave her be.  
  
The food is amazing too, of course. After, she suggests a drink and Polo tells her he knows a good pub nearby. She doesn’t know why he’s laughing when he says it, but then they walk for about five minutes and he points to a little corner pub, with red fluorescent signage reading ‘Dirty Dicks’. She snorts, then rolls her eyes at him and grabs his hand as they walk in.  
  
By the end of the night she's half sitting in his lap and she's buzzed from the gin she's been drinking, and when she runs her fingers through the hair above his ear and whispers, "Take me home," he wastes no time in shooing her off of him and grabbing her hand to walk out.  
  
It’s her idea to walk home, because it’s really only thirty minutes, and it’s not like they’re in a hurry. She’s tipsy enough to think that sounds fun. Her black ankle boots are fairly comfortable; she thinks she can manage. As always, though, she underestimates the London winds and finds herself shivering and clinging to him just fifteen minutes into their walk, when they successfully cross Southwark Bridge. Then it starts to rain out of nowhere, and Lu shrieks as she pulls Polo with her to take shelter under the nearest bridge underpass.  
  
“Walking home was a great idea,” he jokes, combing his fingers through her wet hair. All she does in response is groan. “I thought Valerio was the one we go to for shitty ideas — I guess I got lucky you stepped up your game while he’s gone.”  
  
It’s a super lame joke, but she smiles anyway, then kisses him a little while they wait for the rain to calm down.  
  
They’re in bed later, both catching their breath, when Lu says, "I had a lot of fun with you today,” and tries not to smile too widely, even if her head is on his chest and he probably can’t see anyway. She doesn’t know why she says it at all, but it feels true, and he deserves to hear her say it. Maybe it’s a placeholder for all the other things she isn’t saying.  
  
(She also knows if this was Val, he’d absolutely make a suggestive comment about all the ‘fun’ they just had. She loves how different they are from one another.)  
  
Polo runs a hand through her hair. “Me too,” He strokes his thumb over the side of her breast as innocently as he's ever done anything. Which is to say he actually makes it feel innocent and not at all sexual — she doesn’t know how.  
  
“Hey, how do you feel about weddings?”  
  
She’s glad he can’t see the look on her face, because it takes her a second to understand he’s not asking her to marry him. When she does, she decides she might as well make a joke out of it.  
  
“You might wanna tell me you love me first.”  
  
The second the words leave her lips, she regrets them. Polo is still running his hand up and down her side, and he hasn’t stopped, so she’s hoping that means they can just ignore her stupid attempt at humor and move on.  
  
Apparently he doesn’t want to. “Of course I do,” he laughs quietly, and she pulls away abruptly, sitting up to look at him. “What?”  
  
“I didn’t think you’d actually say it,” she shrieks, laughing, then playfully pushes at his chest when he tries to sit up too.  
  
“Jeez, you tell a girl you love her and all she does is laugh at you,” and when he looks over at her, she almost feels nauseous from the euphoria she’s currently experiencing.  
  
Her smile feels like it might crack her face in two and she's never felt so relieved in her entire life, she’s pretty sure. She kisses him, just briefly, then pulls away. “Wait, why did you ask me about weddings?”  
  
Polo looks a little dazed and confused, like he forgot that part of the conversation even happened. “Oh, my cousin is getting married next spring and I need a date.”  
  
Lu laughs. Spring seems pretty far away right now; they can talk about that later. “Okay.”  
  
He pulls her on top of him, kisses her gently for a moment and she knows he’s only doing this to prove to her that he doesn’t expect her to sleep with him in exchange for the love confession. It’s cute, and totally admirable, but she’s obviously going to, so she kisses him back harder until he relents and gives up on the whole closed mouth kissing thing. They’re both naked already, and things escalate rather quickly, until he pulls back to nip at her jaw.  
  
“Say it.”  
  
She smiles a little as she looks down at him, then takes his face in her hands and brushes her thumbs over his cheeks. "You know I do.” Yes, she’s turning this whole thing into a little bit of a game, but anything that makes this less daunting helps.  
  
“Come on,” he presses against her gently, and she fights to keep her eyes from falling closed. That’s so not fair.  
  
It’s actually ridiculous that she feels this scared of saying it back. She already knows he loves her, and she’s absolutely sure she feels the same way, so why is this so hard?  
  
She whispers the three words against his neck, can’t bare the idea of looking him in the eye for some reason, and he instantly grabs her, kissing her again.  
  
It’s not a grand romantic gesture, or as picturesque as they make it out to be in Hollywood movies, but it’s _them_ and that’s enough for her.  
  
**  
  
Valerio gets back from his road trip through Scotland, and things are really, really great for a week.  
  
“Got you something,” he says, when she’s done hugging and kissing him hello. Polo is in class, and she’s supposed to be studying, but she figured she could afford to cancel on her study group and do that at home — not that she’s gonna get anything done like this. She kind of expected that, though.  
  
By the look on his face, she can tell it’s going to be some sort of stupid gift that he figured she would find funny, but she’s still curious. She follows him to her room, which both of them use to store their stuff. His bag is on the floor, and he reaches down and grins when he turns around and hands her a stuffed Loch Ness monster toy.  
  
“It made me think of you,” he says and she glares at him, mostly joking around.  
  
She takes a look at the stuffed monster and figures it’s pretty cute, at least. If he’s gonna compare her to a monster, there are worse options. “Wow, thank you so much… This is why women love you; you always know just what to say.”  
  
He tenses at her mention of the L-word, and she rolls her eyes and pets the stuffed toy instead. It’s kind of soft, which feels nice. Maybe they should adopt a cat at some point. (She barely slept last night and can’t be held accountable for the random game of word association her brain is playing, alright?)  
  
“Nessie is just as preoccupied with hiding from the rest of the world as you are, except she does it to avoid being captured,” he says, and she can’t decide if it’s weird or endearing that he has an actual explanation for why the Loch Ness monster reminded him of her. “Plus look at her, she’s adorable, but fierce.”  
  
That and the little grin on his face is what gets her in the end. She hugs the stupid toy to her chest, then throws it on her bed so she can wrap her arms around his neck.  
  
“I missed you,” she says, emboldened by her recent conversation with Polo. It might be healthier for her to sometimes talk about her feelings instead of keeping them inside. She’s still working on figuring out whether or not she wants to do that.  
  
Valerio kisses her in response, then moves so they’re sitting down on the bed, Lu in his lap. “I always miss you.”  
  
It’s so raw and honest, she doesn’t know what to make of it. “But I’m right here,” she says, in a futile effort to turn this into a joke.  
  
“Yeah,” he breathes, and he looks contemplative, which she really hates. They shouldn’t even be having a serious conversation right now; they should be celebrating his return.  
  
She tries not to react, but her breath sort of catches. He notices, because of course he does.  
  
Mutual avoidance of uncomfortable conversations is their shared middle name, so when he kisses her to put an end to it, she gladly takes him up on the offer.  
  
**  
  
Sleeping in between them again is, honestly, kind of Lu’s favorite thing in the world. It’s definitely the best thing that’s happened to her so far this month, and she thinks it might stay like that, even though it’s December and Christmas is her favorite holiday.  
  
She’s always loved Christmas. Not for religious reasons, because she’s obviously in no position to assume any form of christianity might line up with her actions in life or her world view, but she’s always loved how the holiday season slows things down. How people take time away from work and school and busy lives to show up for their family and friends.  
  
This year, though, she’s not sure she even wants Christmas to happen at all. She has no home to go back to for the holidays and knows she won’t see her family sitting around the dinner table on Christmas Eve chatting along merrily.  
  
But that doesn’t mean she can’t appreciate the holiday season anyway. She’ll have to come up with new traditions to make it special.  
  
It may only be the first week of December, but she still drags Polo and Val to Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park. She loves fun fairs — add a huge Christmas market to that and you’ve found the key to her heart. She makes them go on silly rides with her and eat way too much overpriced Christmas market food. After the mulled wine and the giant portion of fried potatoes and sausage she consumes, Valerio dares her to eat this giant pink cloud of cotton candy, which she does just to prove a point. She feels like she’s high on sugar for the next hour and convinces them to ice skate with her, tries not to laugh when Polo falls on his ass the second they step foot on the rink.  
  
And okay, maybe watching Polo ice skate like a newborn foal struggling to walk is also one of her favorite things of the month so far. The way Valerio grins at her when it happens, his unruly curls sticking out of the cute blue hat she’d gotten him last month might be up there, too.  
  
It’s exactly the kind of night she needed to mentally prepare for her upcoming weeks of exams, and despite her lack of religious affiliation, she still tags the Instagram picture she shares of the boys posing on their skates as #blessed — not by any deity, but by whatever force in life that got her to this point.  
  
She feels pretty damn lucky to have them.  
  
**  
  
Of course she’s not eavesdropping on purpose. That would be rude and inconsiderate. She overhears Val and Polo in the kitchen one morning, when she’s still in bed, talking as they have breakfast.  
  
They’re talking quietly about their plans for the day, and she smiles when she hears Valerio say something about a yoga workshop. He’s sort of fallen in with this weird group of modern Buddhists, and keeps insisting he’s only in it for the yoga, not the cult-like religious offerings. The stories he tells about their sessions are kind of bizarre and amazing.  
  
Then, Polo gets ready for class (Lu always forgets he even _has_ class until he mentions it; that’s how little he talks about it) and she hears him walk back into the kitchen after he’s put on his shoes and coat, figures he must say something to make Valerio laugh.  
  
“Love you,” Val says, casual, effortless, like it’s the most normal thing in the world.  
  
Polo sounds just as unaffected, so this can’t be news to him. “You too.”  
  
Jealousy isn’t the right word to describe what she feels. Of course they love each other. They should. She wants them to.  
  
But the fact that Valerio has told Polo this, when he can barely even look her in the eye and mention feelings stings.  
  
She makes sure Val is around later that night when she tells Polo she loves him as he pours her a glass of wine, and sort of hopes it irks him, just a bit.  
  
Competitiveness is definitely the least productive way to solve this; she knows that, and yet she can’t make herself stop. Anything else sounds like it would require emotional maturity she isn’t sure she possesses.  
  
**  
  
Her phone buzzes when she walks out of the gym later that day. She’s just finished up a grueling barre class — unsurprisingly confirming her suspicions that she is indeed completely out of shape and masquerading as skinny-fat. The message is from Leah and just says 'We're going out for drinks tonight' and the name of a place and the address, and yes, that sounds like a good idea. Being healthy and getting in shape be damned.  
  
She replies that she’ll be there, and asks if there’s anything else she should bring, which is really just a thinly veiled attempt to check whether Leah is okay with the boys coming along. ‘No boys allowed’ is what the girl replies, and that’s fine, too.  
  
When Lu walks into the place, Leah is already sitting at the bar, nursing a drink. It’s a quaint little Mexican restaurant, which Lu has been meaning to try out, so she’s pretty thrilled she’ll get to spend her night eating tacos and drinking micheladas and margaritas, and maybe some decent tequila, too.  
  
“Why do you look miserable?” Lu deadpans, which is probably not what she's supposed to say, but Leah looks tired and cranky and she’s got her hair up in a bun which she once told her she only does when she’s feeling off. They’re close enough at this point to be honest to the point of rudeness with each other.  
  
“Hello to you too,” Leah laughs, then takes a large sip of what Lu assumes is a margarita. Dealing with somebody else’s problems for once sounds great, so Lu sits down next to her and orders a drink and a few tacos.  
  
Despite her less than stellar track record with keeping multiple close friends, Lu likes taking care of people, so she switches gears to protective friend mode and gives Leah a scolding look. “Have you eaten?” The blonde shakes her head, and Lu rolls her eyes. “Ok, well, you will.”  
  
They have a few tacos each, then a few drinks, and Leah seems to be cheering up a little. “You know that guy I was seeing,” she starts, and Lu sips her margarita and nods. As far as she knows, they’re not seriously dating, but they’ve been out enough times that Lu has a feeling it may be headed there. “He’s dating someone else.”  
  
Lu rolls her eyes. “I’m never gonna understand London dating culture. Who the fuck has time to date several people at once?”  
  
And she really doesn’t get it — dating is exhausting, how do people have the energy to get to know multiple people at once? She’s been living vicariously through Leah in that respect, and the world of dating apps and hookups seems daunting to navigate in the city. Lu is pretty glad she doesn’t have to deal with any of that.  
  
“Uh, you’re one to talk,” the blonde replies, then laughs. “But yeah, agreed, it’s fucked.”  
  
“So are you gonna keep seeing him?”  
  
Leah sighs. “Obviously,” Which is a good point, because unfortunately, you have to play the game to win the game. They’re quiet for a moment, then the blonde perks up and grins at Lu. “I know we have to study, but can we do tequila shots? Please?”  
  
That’s a sacrifice Lu is willing to make for her friend, in a totally selfless way. It’s Friday, anyway, so she’ll have the rest of the weekend to recover and begrudgingly study for next week’s exams. She’s pretty sure she could use some tequila as well.  
  
**  
  
Lu and Valerio have a ridiculous fight which ends with her running to her room to throw a little bit of a fit and cry. She hears Polo come home and chat to Val in the living room, where she’s sure he’s sitting on the couch with a glass of whiskey in hand and a scowl on his face. Then she hears Valerio say, "The bitch is in there," and Lu instantly wants to angry cry again. She can be a bitch and Val doesn't always handle that so well.  


Polo pushes open the door to Lu’s room and finds her in there clutching Nessie and crying softly. She instantly feels sort of stupid about it, like she’s been caught acting like a dramatic little girl, but it is what it is. She’s not gonna stop feeling sorry for herself now. Exams are daunting and stressful enough; she doesn't really need all the additional tension of living with someone who loves to hate on her for sport.  
  
"Can you please make him stop calling me that?" Lu sniffles pathetically and Polo sits down at the edge of the bed. "He found someone’s phone number in my pocket."  


Okay, now Polo seems pissed, too. "Why the fuck did you have someone’s phone number in your pocket?"  
  
Lu pouts.  “It’s not like that, okay? Why would I put it there?”  
  
She’s pretty sure the slight set of his jaw is jealousy. It looks kind of strange on his face.  
  
“So someone just grabbed you and slipped it in your back pocket?”  
  
Polo still looks unsure, like he’s wondering if he should be mad at her too, and she thinks it’s kind of amusing to see them put on this united, jealous front. Or she would think that, anyway, if she wasn’t still recovering from a shouting match with Valerio, who had the audacity to call her _desperate for attention_ , which kind of hit a little too close to home. (And sure, she may have retaliated and called him a brooding trust fund baby with no ambition or drive, but whatever. He started this. Lu gives as good as she gets. They both like a vicious fight.)  
  
“One of the TAs gave me his business card so I’d have his email,” she scoffs, but there are still tears in her eyes, and she doesn’t even really know why. It’s not like her stupid TA was hitting on her, or anything. He was being helpful and they were joking around, and he slipped it in her back pocket. So what? Why is that such a big deal? She didn’t even remember it was still in there until Valerio found it as they were making out. Talk about ruining the moment.  
  
Hearing this seems to make Polo feel better, and she’s glad he doesn’t ask any follow-up questions. It’s just a total non-issue, which they shouldn’t bother trying to turn into one.  
  
Val walks by then, lingers in the door long enough to laugh at her sitting there crying into her Nessie toy. “Stop acting like a fucking child, Lu.”  
  
“You two need to figure this out,” Polo says, and actually rolls his eyes at them, which she’s never seen him do before. Angry Polo usually gets all nervous and stutters a little, but this frustrated version of him is confident in his anger, and she finds it strangely hot.  
  
Lu pouts. She doesn’t want to figure anything out, or talk about the obvious elephant in the room which is causing all of these ridiculous fights as of late — these feelings her and Val have been ignoring for years. Feelings are yucky. God, now she really does feel like a child.  
  
Sometime around three in the morning, Lu is done feeling sorry for herself and leaves her big, empty bed in search of greener pastures. She climbs in between Polo and Val, who instinctively make room for her.  
  
“Hey babe,” Val murmurs, half asleep, and she doesn’t say anything about the uncharacteristic pet name because she _did_ wake him up at 3:00 by climbing in his bed.  


"I need you," Lu says, not bothering with pleasantries. Her hand slides over Valerio's chest. "Both of you."  


She kisses the back of Polo's shoulder and that's kind of the end of the fight.  
  
**

Exams are hard, and spaced out over a two week period she finds herself studying for several hours a day, just to make sure she’s prepared enough to pass. She used to love exams, because they were essentially an exercise in memorization, but university is quickly teaching her how exhausting it can be, having to apply judgment and use common sense to form conclusions on any given paragraph of law.  
  
It’s not that she’s questioning her own intelligence, it’s just a lot harder to be recognized as smart when you’re part of a huge group of incredibly clever people. She loves being surrounded by people who care as much as her, but it does make her feel a little less special.  
  
Her hand is pretty much constantly cramping up, mainly because some of the exams span several hours, and when she gets home after one of them and finds Polo on the couch, she just sort of wordlessly drapes herself over him and makes a pitiful sound.  
  
Polo laughs, but clearly sees she’s desperate for attention and a way to relax, because he brings her a glass of wine, then grabs a few takeaway menus off the fridge and asks her what she’s in the mood for. She’s definitely not in the mood for having to actively make decisions, so she just grunts in response to any question he asks and nods when he calls the Chinese place next door.  
  
“Val?” She asks, and Polo somehow gets that this is her asking where he is, not calling him by the wrong name by accident.  
  
“Holding a yoga workshop,” he says, which she rolls her eyes at. He’s been getting more and more involved with that; if being a yogi is what makes him feel fulfilled, she supposes that’s fine.  
  
She leans over and kisses Polo lazily until the reception calls saying their food is in the lobby, and she’s pretty sure she falls asleep with her head in his lap an hour later.  
  
Winter break can’t come soon enough.  
  
**  
  
There’s never really a good time to get wine drunk and share your deepest and darkest secret with someone, but Lu thinks doing it in the middle of exams might have been an especially bad idea.  
  
The boys go out for dinner, drinks and crazy golf, mainly because Lu yells at them about needing peace and quiet to study, and she manages to be productive for a whole hour. Then, Leah texts her fifty different emojis she’s never seen before, says _‘So tired of studying, I decided to rank my least favorite emojis’_ and Lu loves her for the distraction, because if she has to read one more paragraph of public law, she might just dramatically throw herself out the window.  
  
Leah is at her door half an hour later, two bottles of wine in hand and talking about a mile a minute about what type of food they should order in, and Lu hugs the blonde and ushers her inside. They order pizza, because carbs are important right before exams, and Lu realizes that between all the fighting at home, her attempts at studying and spending time with Polo, she hasn’t really spent proper quality time with a friend in a while. It feels great to just sit around and talk about random shit that isn’t going to go on her permanent academic record for once.  
  
She doesn’t even realize how tipsy she is until she sees half of the second bottle of wine is now gone.  
  
Leah shows her a childhood picture of herself that she recently rediscovered, which leads to Lu getting out her laptop and scrolling through her iCloud library to show Leah some of her own embarrassing teenage memories.  
  
There’s one of her and Valerio dressed in traditional Emirati clothing, and Leah snorts and makes a completely culturally insensitive comment about how it looks like Valerio owns her which she is slightly ashamed to admit she laughs at.  
  
“God, we must have been like eleven and thirteen, maybe? Look at my braces,” Lu laughs, and really — thank god for hormones and puberty. Talk about a glow-up. “He was so miserable that summer. We were stuck in Abu Dhabi, it was like 500 degrees, and dad wouldn’t let us leave the compound because there were safety concerns.”  
  
It’s definitely the wine. That’s why she doesn’t see the next question coming.  
  
“Wait, you lived in the same compound?”  
  
Lu doesn’t want to make a big deal about it, doesn't want to go for a grand setup that makes the next thing she says sound all juicy and salacious, so she nods and tries to sound casual. “We lived together, that year, actually,” she shrugs, which is to say they didn’t _normally_ live together. “He’s my half-brother.”  
  
To her credit, Leah does not actually gasp or scream. She looks startled for a second, then nods, like that somehow makes a lot of sense. She listens to Lu attentively as she explains the whole story, about how he was barely ever around, about his rebellious years and finally getting kicked out of boarding school, about how she was an angsty, reckless teenager with a drinking problem and a passion for self-loathing, who lacked a parental figure that actually bothered to pay attention to her, and when Lu is done and finally lets herself look over at Leah, the blonde moves over and hugs her. It’s fucked, maybe, that Lu feels sorry for herself when they embrace — because if her back story sounds tragic enough for someone else to think it might justify sleeping with her half-brother, she’s probably in need of actual counseling.  
  
“I didn’t mean to tell you about that,” Lu mutters, then pours herself another glass of wine.  
  
Leah laughs, then clinks her glass against hers. “It could be worse, you know,” which, no, she doesn’t — it sounds pretty bad to her. “He could be your twin brother.”  
  
Lu fake gags at that, pushes at Leah’s shoulder, and that’s that — they go back to talking about other stuff, they don’t stop being friends, and nothing really changes.  
  
**  
  
The way she can feel Valerio pulling away from her would be easier to stomach if she knew how to bring it up. Instead, it only makes her feel worse about the current state of things — because if he’s this reluctant to spend time with her now, she doesn’t want to imagine how much weirder things would get if she tried to talk to him about her feelings on things.  
  
Carla, of course, is convinced she’s being a — quote — “complete fucking idiot” about all of this.  
  
“Ugh,” she groans into the phone, glad that the library is mostly empty so she can talk to her in peace. “Being single sounds so tempting right now.”  
  
“Why are you acting like your only option to fix this is being single?”  
  
Lu knows exactly what she’s implying, and she doesn’t like it one bit. She doesn’t even want to think it. Carla says it anyway.  
  
“You’d still have Polo, you know… It might be for the best.”  
  
And on a rational level it might be, sure. It might be what’s best for her, and even Polo, because it would make their lives easier. It would make Polo’s moms happier. It would save them from constantly having to be selective about who they let in on their little secret, which isn’t very little at all. But that would leave Valerio on his own, with no one to turn to. She doesn’t want to be the reason he finally ends up joining that Buddhist cult, or turns to drugs and dies a premature death.  
  
It’s too overwhelming to even think about, so she tells Carla to stop using logic, hangs up, and stubbornly refuses to go home before she’s reviewed all of her notes for her Contract Law exam twice.  
  
**  
  
There’s another fight, and this time Valerio is the one refusing to talk to her — though she knows, honestly, that this is all just them fighting over arbitrary things to avoid having a real conversation with each other. And while it may start out with Valerio ignoring her, Lu retaliates fiercely.  
  
It doesn’t help that she’s got her final two exams this week, which she’s stressing about, while Valerio and Polo are seemingly just kicking back and taking it easy. That alone makes her angry; because while she gets, on a rational level, that she’s more ambitious than the average person, that doesn’t mean she’s okay with them just living their lives aimlessly. Honestly, she’s so over-caffeinated and sleep-deprived, anything would make her mad this week.  
  
They barely talk for three days, just barely exchange pleasantries and Lu always has some excuse why she can't be home or won't be home. She knows she’s being stupid, but she doesn’t care. The one time all three of them are in the same place, Valerio drags Polo with him to their room and proceeds to have the loudest sex ever with him. Lu is pissed, so she fucks Polo in the kitchen when she knows Valerio is trying to sleep in the next morning.  


The boys are sitting on the couch watching a random game show on TV when Lu comes home from her pilates class, takes one look at them, then walks to her bedroom after saying hello to Polo, and _only_ Polo.  
  
He literally yells for her to come back in there, which is impressive only because she knows he doesn’t like to get involved.  


"Jesus, will you just make up?" Polo says. "I can't handle this."  


Lu rolls her eyes. ”You're being used for sex daily so we can piss each other off. Please tell me how this is hard for you.” She thinks she hears Valerio snort at that, which is the only thing he’s done to acknowledge her presence so far. That sort of makes her smile at him, which is probably a good start in terms of making up.  
  
They’re mostly civil with each other for the rest of the night, and even though neither of them apologizes, the way Valerio runs his knuckles down her arm as Polo gets up to grab their food delivery makes her think Val might be ready to stop fighting, too.  
  
She pecks his lips, then gets up to grab plates and hears him laugh as she walks away.  
  
“If you don’t stop laughing, I’ll go back to ignoring you,” she throws over her shoulder, but she’s grinning, too.  
  
A little ceasefire would be nice.  
  
**  
  
After the third fight in however many days, Polo literally just doesn’t come home after class, texts the two of them to ‘fucking get over this already’ and says he’s staying with a friend. And Lu thought _she_ was dramatic.  


Admittedly, their fights have been getting increasingly ridiculous, neither of them even bothering to hide that they’re just trying to piss the other off by being as cruel as possible anymore, and she’s tired of it.  
  
The problem is they’ve always fought like this. They’ve just never been in the sort of situation where they had any reason to pretend their relationship was functional in any way. Polo’s presence is an unwelcome reminder of how each of them is clearly capable of having a normal relationship that isn’t based on mutually assured distraction, and Lu thinks neither of them is willing to acknowledge that.  
  
She rolls her eyes and walks straight to her room when she gets home. Valerio follows right behind her, stands closer to her than she’d like, and she’s pretty much ready to slap him. Neither of them would be surprised if she did, anyway; physical blows are usually a part of their disagreements. Things tend to get heated.

“Lu,” Valerio groans. “Can we talk about this like adults?”  


“Implying I’m a child isn’t the best way to get me to do what you want,” she bites out, then crosses her arms in front of her chest.  
  
He walks up to her, then wraps an arm around her from behind and brushes her hair off her shoulder to kiss her neck.  
  
"We'll never talk if you keep doing this," she says, eyes falling closed as she leans back against him. “ _Val_."  
  
“Maybe I should just leave,” he says, pulling away to sit down on her bed, and she’s not sure whether she’s still mad or just shocked. Where the hell is this coming from all of the sudden? “You don’t need me here.”  
  
She sits down next to him and tries not to come off angry because she isn’t. “What?”  
  
“You could act like a normal couple, lead a normal life, maybe have a few kids, I don’t know,” he’s running a hand through his curls nervously, and Lu seriously wonders where the hell any of this is coming from.  
  
“Val, I’m eighteen, I’m definitely not looking to settle down and start a family,” she jokes, and he doesn’t seem to think that’s funny.  
  
“You might want to, at some point.”  
  
“Why would that matter?” She says, then takes his hand in hers, which makes him look up and meet her eyes. “What makes you think we want that?”  
  
“You and I both know it would be easier that way,” and if they hadn’t gotten so good at talking about things without really talking about them, she might miss the hidden meaning behind that statement.  
  
“Probably,” she says. He sighs, and it makes him lose the youthful naivety he usually wears so well. She absolutely hates when he looks serious. “But I don’t really like doing anything the easy way,” it’s another attempt at keeping things lighter than they are, and neither of them is crying or yelling yet, so she thinks it must be working.  
  
Valerio looks away from her, seemingly hellbent on avoiding eye contact. “This is so frustrating.”  
  
“Sure,” Lu says. “But it’s also worth it.”  
  
He kisses her in response, which is nice and comforting, but Lu knows if they keep going, they’ll end up avoiding this conversation yet again, which is clearly driving them to the brink of insanity, so she pushes him away gently.  
  
“I want both of you, okay?” He nods, resigned to his fate. And really, Lu figures it’s too late not to go there. “I love both of you.” 

That seems to get his attention, and he cracks a grin, looks up at her slowly. “Yeah?”  
  
“Fucking obviously, you obnoxious idiot,” she snaps, then rolls her eyes at him.  
  
He just leans in to kiss her again, still grinning a little. “You know, you could’ve just lead with that, and we could’ve stopped having this conversation fifteen minutes ago.” 

She’s totally teasing when she laughs and says, “Why is it always up to me to figure this shit out? Aren’t you supposed to be the older one?”  
  
He ignores her dig and pushes her shirt up, then uses his hand to push her back against the mattress.  
  
There's something about being with Val like this that she knows is different. It's not just that he's amazing in bed (he is; god, he is). It's something to do with trust, with how well he knows her.  
  
He tells her he loves her, too, when she’s busy trying not to forget to breathe because all of this feels way, way too good. She moans his name and figures that’s that, they can check having an emotionally mature conversation off their bucket list.  
  
All in all, Lu is pleasantly surprised it only took them 18 years to get there.  
  
**  
  
Polo meets them for brunch the next day, because he said something about needing proof that they can exist in the same space for longer than a few minutes without killing one another. While that’s obviously total bullshit, Lu loves brunch, especially when it’s bottomless.  
  
They walk to the place, because it’s a rare sunny winter day, and Polo is already waiting for them outside when they get there. He glances at them, sees them holding hands, and gives her an impressed look. She smirks back, as if to ask if he really expected anything less, and he shakes his head, then hugs them both hello.  
  
Three mimosas in, she can’t really help herself and kisses Val, then Polo right there in their oval-shaped booth, not caring in the least whether anyone around them might care.  
  
This is London. People have better things to do than judge strangers for their choice of three-way relationship.  
  
For that short moment, her life seems simple.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... One more chapter left! It's been quite the ride!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it. The final chapter! Enjoy!

Lu has made some incredibly stupid choices in her life. Like when she was 12, and decided she hated her body and didn’t eat for a week. In the end, a trip to the emergency room and an aggressive lecture from her father changed her mind, made her be more careful about how her self-loathing manifests. Then there was the time when she helped Valerio stage a car accident to ensure their father wouldn’t find out about the huge dent he’d put in the BMW, which she’s pretty sure constituted insurance fraud. Or the time she posted a video of Nadia and Guzmán having sex in the school locker room on the internet, inadvertently distributing child pornography, not to mention the moral implications.  
  
Anyway, bad choices are, apparently, kind of her forte.  


She isn’t sure where this one ranks.  
  
Polo invites them to spend Christmas at his house back in Madrid, tells them he’s already checked with his mothers, who he says were just happy to hear he’s got friends at all. Lu smacks him for that remark, gives Valerio sort of a searching look and… Reluctantly agrees to go.  
  
They get to Madrid in the afternoon, take a taxi to Polo’s house and all very quickly realize this is going to be weird. After dinner, Lu (and Valerio) realize that he's told his moms he's in a relationship with Lu. They’ve put them both up in guest rooms, but she overhears Polo scolding them, saying something about how him and Lu can share a room, and the women both seem so happy about all this that Lu thinks there might be tears involved.  
  
Then she overhears Begoña say, "I'm happy you've chosen Lucrecia, not Valerio. I never liked that whole _phase_."  


It’s barely a whisper and Lu isn't supposed to be in the living room listening to what's going on in the kitchen, but that doesn't mean she doesn't feel really, really bad because of it. It also doesn’t mean she doesn’t understand that Polo probably chose the easy out — it’s not like he could’ve told them he’s dating both of them at the same time — but the realization that there are very legitimate reasons why he can’t even tell his mothers the truth hits her and she suddenly feels kind of nauseous and overwhelmed. So much for a relaxing Christmas break.  
  
Valerio chooses that moment to sneak up behind her, sort of touches her hip, and Lu sighs because she didn’t really need yet another reminder that they can’t just be themselves in this house. She still leans into Val a little, puts her head on his shoulder, and figures as long as they don’t push the envelope on what constitutes friendly casual sibling intimacy, they’re fine.  
  
He takes one look at her and instantly knows she’s feeling off. “Let’s go upstairs, it’s been a long day,” he says, and she nods.

She loves Polo, she does, but she loves being alone with Val sometimes, too, because he just _gets_ her. Has known her longer, been there for her no matter what, no questions asked.  
  
It’s barely 10:00 but she still falls asleep on Polo’s bed with her head in Valerio’s lap, his hands slowly running through her hair. When she wakes up several hours later, she’s under the covers and somebody has taken her uncomfortable dress off for her. Groaning, she reaches for the boys, then sighs when she realizes there’s only one other person asleep next to her.  
  
Twelve hours into their five day stay and she’s ready to go home. Christmas can’t end soon enough, and it hasn’t even started yet.  
  
Polo pulls her closer in his sleep, mumbles something incoherent, and all she can think about is Valerio next door, all by himself, probably feeling like all of his worst rejection nightmares are coming true.  
  
It’s a little startling to see his theory that she’d be better off with just Polo pan out in real life. 

If anything, it makes her want to prove him wrong even more.  
  
**  
  
In the morning, Lu wakes up alone, which makes sense because Polo is an early riser, but usually she’d at least have Valerio to cuddle up to. This sucks. 

She hears the boys’ unmistakable laughter next door and figures she’ll just go nap in there with them, see if she can get a little more sleep. 11 hours don’t seem like enough right now.  
  
Having to put on clothes to walk over to the other room is another gentle reminder that this isn’t her house and she can’t just walk around however she sees fit. She may still be a little pissed about that.

Val and Polo are on the bed, lying side by side when she opens the door, not bothering to knock before walking in, and she doesn’t miss the way Polo briefly flinches, as if he’s ready to jump away from Val should his mothers walk in. 

They’re both wearing sweatpants and nothing else, and they’re barely even touching, but Lu can tell Polo is nervous about being in the same house as his moms anyway. 

Again, Lu totally gets why he’s decided to omit the Valerio aspect of their relationship in his official version, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating. The most frustrating part is that Lu can’t think of a better way to handle this either. 

When she locks the door behind herself and turns back around, the boys are both grinning at her. 

Valerio is lazily stroking a hand up and down Polo’s arm, looking over at her expectantly, and she smirks, then cocks her brow at him.  
  
“Don’t stop on my account,” she says, and Val doesn’t, just leans in and kisses Polo slow and deep.  
  
For all of the possessive, jealous rage fits Lu used to throw, she’s still kind of shocked every single time she watches the boys together and feels herself want them more for it, not less. Maybe it’s because she’s done some emotional maturing or because she knows they don’t want her any less just because they also want each other. That probably makes sense. She figures if they're all sharing each other, no one can really be offended, right?  
  
She stays put for a moment, just watching them together as she stands at the end of the bed. Polo is leaning over Val, one hand on his shoulder and the other one running through his curls. When Val lets out a low groan, she decides she’s had enough of watching from a distance, walks over and sits down, just puts a hand on Polo’s shoulder and pushes him closer to Val. 

They both instantly move around, trying to pull her closer, and she ends up sort of half on top of both of them, straddling one of their thighs each as they shuffle around the king-sized bed.  


When Valerio pushes her into Polo’s lap she laughs and pulls away, shakes her head and moves over to straddle Val instead. 

“I can have him any time,” she tells Val, even if it may be a little shitty to point out. It’s the reality of the situation, though — at least until they get back to London. “I want you.” 

That seems to be just fine with him, because he leans in to kiss her, instantly goes for the bottom of her tank top and pulls it off of her, then attacks her neck with his mouth. 

Some men are into boobs or asses, but Valerio’s kryptonite is definitely neck touching, kissing and biting. It’s like he was a vampire in another life and now still shares the same fascination with having his teeth so close to a major artery, minus the whole blood sucking thing. 

Polo groans quietly, and she absolutely loves this — loves knowing that he gets off on watching her with Valerio, too. 

“Polo,” Val mutters, resting his chin on her shoulder as he looks over at him. “Can you believe her? You bring a girl home to spend Christmas with your parents and she throws herself at the other random house guest.” 

Lu chuckles, even though she’d rather hurry this along. If Val is still coherent enough to form such long, thought out sentences she clearly isn’t doing enough. She grinds against him and hopes he’ll get the hint, but he just grabs her hips roughly to hold her in place. Ugh. 

When Lu opens her eyes to glance at Polo, he’s grinning. “I did think it was odd when she insisted on bringing her other boyfriend along.” 

Okay, enough. “You’re both ridiculous,” she groans and Valerio takes that moment to bite down on her collarbone, while Polo is toying with the little bow on her cotton shorts and she moans, trying but failing to stay quiet. “Neither of you is funny.” 

Which very well might be a lie because they’re definitely both hilarious, if a little lame and dorky at times, and she never gets tired of listening to their stupid banter. But Valerio’s got his hand sinking into her hair and then he kisses her, and things stop being funny altogether.  
  
There’ll be time for stupid jokes later. Right now she just wants them both in whatever capacity she can get them — anything to feel a sliver of normalcy to make their stay in Madrid more bearable.  
  
It’s a pleasurable start to her day.  
  
**  
  
The only upside of being back in town is having Carla around again. Lu leaves the boys in bed and meets her for a boozy brunch, and Carla seems equally fed up with being back here, which is nice. At least they can be miserable together.  
  
Of course Carla asks about how things are going at Polo’s house, and of course Lu goes on a little bit of a rant about what she overheard last night.  
  
“Oh, Begoña is a fucking bitch,” Carla mutters, taking a sip of her wine. “Andrea is the decent one.”  
  
Lu doesn’t say what she’s thinking, which is that they both seem like pretty terrible mothers, if not just terrible people. Imagine being self-involved enough to not realize your son tried to kill himself. They’re _that_ bad. Their disdain for his taste in romantic partners is nothing compared to that.  
  
This whole thing has her fed up enough to be petty. “You should come over for dinner,” she says. “They’d _love_ that.”

She’s not even kidding; they probably would love that. Carla is always going to be who they want their son to be with; Lu is only slightly bitter about it.  
  
“I could pretend to be dating Valerio, too, just to piss them off further,” Carla grins. That actually sounds hilarious, and Lu figures she may as well text Polo and ask. It’s not her house; she can’t just invite someone over for dinner but he totally can.  
  
“That would also give you an excuse to miss out on dinner with your parents,” Lu says, because Carla has already spent a significant amount of time telling her how much she hates being around them. Polo chooses that exact moment to respond to her text, telling her Carla is welcome anytime — perfect timing. “Polo says you’re welcome to stop by.”  
  
The next hour is spent drinking countless mimosas as Lu delicately extracts information about Carla’s love life from her which is no small feat — Carla isn’t the kind of person to offer that sort of information up willingly. The girl usually prefers to talk about Lu’s myriad of relationship problems instead. Apparently, she was casually seeing someone she met in class for a while, but then she got back here a few days ago and ran into Samuel and — well, Lu isn’t gonna judge her too harshly for it but Carla’s continued inexplicable crush on the guy is definitely a character flaw.  
  
They stroll around the city for most of the day, doing some last-minute Christmas shopping, and when she gets back to Polo’s house with Carla in tow, the boys are just getting ready to get in the jacuzzi.  
  
“You should join us,” Polo says, playing with the tie on his bathrobe. “Dinner isn’t for another hour.”  
  
They let the boys in on their silly idea to mess with Polo’s moms and settle into the jacuzzi, each of them clutching a glass of champagne. Neither of the girls had the foresight to bring a swimsuit, but underwear is an acceptable replacement.  
  
Andrea comes outside to tell them dinner is almost ready about 40 minutes later, sees the four of them in the Jacuzzi, and practically sprints over to say hi to Carla.  
  
“It’s great to see you,” she says. Lu hides her face against Polo’s shoulder so she can roll her eyes in peace. “Are you staying for dinner? You must!”  
  
Valerio looks amused by the whole thing, because he throws an arm around Carla and pulls her close. “Of course she is,” he says, then looks at the blonde girl in his arms. “Right, babe?”  
  
Credit where credit is due — Andrea hides the flicker of realization that flashes across her face well.  
  
Carla just smiles at her and nods. “Sure.”  
  
The second the older woman retreats inside, all four of them are cracking up. Inviting Carla over was _such_ a good idea.  
  
“He never calls me babe,” Lu tells Carla and laughs when Valerio splashes warm water in her direction.  
  
“That nickname is reserved for Polo and Polo only,” Val insists, laughing when Polo rolls his eyes at him.  
  
Carla grins at Polo. “Which one of them is gonna be more upset about me ‘dating’ Valerio?”  
  
“Oh, my money’s on Momma B,” Valerio says, tugging on Lu’s arm to pull her into his lap. “She hates us.”  
  
Lu elbows him and laughs. “Hey, speak for yourself, she totally tolerates me.”  
  
“Yeah Val, she definitely hates you more,” Polo winks at him.  
  
It would probably be depressing if they didn’t choose to have a sense of humor about it.  
  
They all towel off and head upstairs to get ready and when Carla steps into her jeans, she looks up at Lu and smiles.  
  
“You seem good,” she says. “Aside from the whole mothers-in-law disaster.”  
  
And yeah, she thinks that’s a fair assessment. Being around Polo’s moms isn’t exactly her idea of a relaxing Christmas break, but it’s important to him, so she’ll suck it up. Things could be a lot worse, she decides.  
  
“I _am_ good.”  
  
(Dinner is fucking hilarious. Begoña totally tries to not lose her cool when Valerio casually refers to Carla as his ‘plans for dessert’ and they all end up upstairs in Polo’s room afterward, sharing a bottle of wine as they reminisce about the absurdity of the situation.  
  
Lu fucking _loves_ all three of them so much.)  
  
**  
  
Her friends host a small get-together the day before Christmas, because they obviously can’t all be in Madrid at the same time without getting together to catch up and check in on who’s sleeping with who now. (Samuel is mysteriously MIA, and Carla shrugs sort of noncommittally when Lu asks, which leads her to think they had some sort of falling out, but she doesn’t push her on it further.)  
  
Guzmán smiles at her when he sees her walking into Rebeka’s house and she forces herself to nod at him. She kind of hates that he’s here.  
  
That's not why she didn't want to come. She didn't want to come because she cares about all of these people enough to want to catch up with them, but doesn’t want to subject herself to yet another night of putting on a show. It’s not like she can actually tell any of them about the new developments in her (love) life.  
  
All of this is so much easier to pull off when they’re thousands of miles away from anyone who knows about their intricate and intertwined backstory.  
  
Don’t get her wrong — it’s really nice to see everyone. She’s thrilled to see everyone doing reasonably well; even people like Rebeka, who she never really cared about much other than to keep entertained when she needed someone to snap at.  
  
It’s also really nice to share this bizarre experience with Carla as they stand around off to the side and down a couple of G&Ts before rejoining the mayhem. Lu is pretty sure she’s hugged everyone in the room at least twice now — she’s had enough of touching people.  
  
Guzmán currently has his arm around Polo and is telling him some sort of story, his face all animated and boyish and excited, and Lu would probably think that’s cute if she wasn’t acutely aware of what Guzmán thinks of their relationship. She sort of wonders how Polo feels about all of this.  
  
She groans, and Carla glances at her, then checks to see who she’s staring at.  
  
“Does he know?” 

Lu nods, because everyone in the room knows about how she’s ‘dating’ Polo at this point. Carla is the only one who knows the full story, since Nadia didn’t come home for winter break.  
  
“He told me we — quote — _both know this isn’t what I want_ during his visit in November,” Lu snickers, downing the rest of the gin in her glass in one go. Carla scoffs and rolls her eyes. “Fuck this, I’m going in.”  
  
Carla is probably the best friend she could ever ask for, she decides when the blonde hooks her arm through hers and joins her on her march over to interrupt Polo and Guzmán’s conversation.  
  
It’s a little petty, but Lu still puts an arm around Polo and leans into him a little bit. If it still bothers Guzmán, he doesn’t let it show. Polo smiles down at her and pecks her lips like it’s second nature to him, which it definitely is at this point. She meets Carla’s eyes as the blonde tells Guzmán some story about her Parisian food adventures and the way Carla grins at her lets her know her little public display of affection is fairly transparent. Whatever. She wasn’t trying for subtlety anyway.

Then Val saunters over, casually throws an arm around Lu’s waist and she has to actively glare at Carla to get the girl to stop smirking at her. It’s a little obvious, but thankfully Guzmán is completely oblivious, as always.

He high fives Valerio and comes over for one of those stupid manly half hugs. Lu will never understand why men can’t just hug each other the normal way.

“Valerio, man,” he says, pointing at him with his bottle of beer. “How are you holding up in London with these two?” 

She knows the look on Val’s face well — a little too well, actually. He’s totally about to say something completely inappropriate. 

“You know,” Valerio muses, gesturing with his glass of whiskey. “Always there to offer a helping hand when they need it.”  
  
Next to Guzmán, Carla snorts, and Lu gently elbows Valerio in the ribs. He doesn’t flinch, which means he was expecting it. Asshole. Polo is just sort of laughing quietly.  
  
Carla smiles at Val, then at Lu and raises her glass for a toast. “You’re so lucky to have such a caring brother, Lu,” she snickers.  
  
Ha. Really fucking funny. Lu laughs it off, but suddenly really wishes she wasn’t just tipsy; it’d be nice to be drunk for this part of the night. She really should have done shots earlier.  
  
There’s no time like the present, though.  
  
As if on cue, Rebeka walks over with a tray of fireball shots. Lu is in front of her grabbing one before she can even open her mouth.  
  
“Shots, anyone?”  
  
Nobody else seems as into the idea, but Lu kind of wants to hug Rebeka for her impeccable timing.  
  
She downs one, and Rebeka grins at her like she’s impressed. “In need of some liquid courage, huh?” She asks, keeping her voice low. Lu appreciates that; it’s almost enough to make her think Rebeka is trying to be nice.  
  
“You have no idea…”  
  
“Yeah, must be tough having the full attention of every straight guy in the room right now,” the brunette jokes, and Lu rolls her eyes and picks up another shot glass, giving Rebe a challenging look.  
  
They end up taking the tray over to the couch, sitting down away from everyone, and the drunker Lu gets, the more she starts wondering about why she never bothered to befriend Rebeka. She seems kind of fun if you can get past the terrible taste in fashion.  
  
“People are telling me you’re dating Polo now,” Rebeka says after her fourth and Lu’s fifth shot. (Not that anyone’s counting, but.)  
  
Lu groans and rolls her eyes. “Who’s people?”  
  
She follows Rebeka’s eyes as she not-so-subtly glances at Guzmán. Ugh. Why the fuck is he telling anyone _anything_ about her relationship status?  
  
Scoffing in response seems only fair. “ _That’s_ your source? My idiot of an ex-boyfriend? Please.”  
  
“I wasn’t asking around, for the record,” which means she totally was, so Lu just laughs and raises another shot to her lips. Rebeka mirrors her movements, and they lock eyes as they down the liquor.  
  
Okay, she’s going to pry. If Rebeka is asking other people about her, she can ask her about herself.  
  
“And what about you?”  


“What about me,” the girl deadpans. “Still struggling to find someone to date that I don’t want to fucking murder after more than one night together.”  
  
Yeah, Rebeka doesn’t really seem like the relationship type, now that Lu thinks about it.  
  
Somewhere between talking about her stupid relationship, and Rebeka’s lack of one, Lu gets drunk. Objectively speaking, one might say she gets too drunk. Drunk enough, Rebeka — who can’t be all that sober either, alright? — calls in reinforcements and waves Polo over.  
  
Polo plops down on the couch next to her and she instantly puts her head on his shoulder. He smells nice.  
  
“Hey Romeo,” Rebeka says. “She’s been alternating between fits of rage and making that teary-eyed pouty face for like twenty minutes, saying something about your moms and society and life being cruel.”  
  
Polo laughs a little and pulls her closer. “Could you give us a minute?”  
  
Even in her drunken state of frustration, Lu admires his casual chivalry. He’s so fucking polite.  
  
When she feels Rebeka get up, Polo’s voice is in her ear, quiet and gentle. “Do you wanna go home?”  
  
She doesn’t get to answer him, because Valerio sits down on the other side of her then, putting an arm around her. He twirls her hair around his finger and she’s resisting the urge to lean into him. His touch feels really, really nice and she’s feeling a little needy. His other hand lands on her thigh and she gives him a weak smile as she covers it with her own. Okay, she’s feeling _a lot_ needy.  
  
“Val,” she hears Polo next to her whisper. When Valerio doesn’t budge, Polo tries again, more sternly this time. “Valerio”.  
  
Valerio scoffs, petulant, but removes his hand from her thigh anyway. Yeah, he must hate this just as much as she does.  
  
Polo brushes her hair out of her face and smiles at her encouragingly. “Should we go, Lu?”  
  
She thinks about it, looks into his eyes and nods her head. God, there are definitely already rumors about them, or speculation, or people talking shit. Now they’re sitting here and touching and she probably looks like she’s been crying and they’re both looking at her with genuine concern. Maybe she should care more about what people around them think.  
  
It’s totally stupid, but fact that she can’t just lean over and hug Valerio right now is making her feel so much worse. She’ll blame it on the alcohol.  
  
Valerio and Polo look at each other, silently working out the logistics of their exit.  
  
“Wait here,” Val says, finally, and she nods. It’s not like she’s gonna refuse an offer to _not_ have to parade around the room and drunkenly hug people goodbye. They’re back a few minutes later, and Polo holds out his hand for her to take, helps her get up.  
  
She spots Carla watching her from across the room, just waves at her and tries for a smile, and the blonde smiles back. Whatever, they can catch up tomorrow. Lu can’t be bothered to explain her confusing drunk state of mind to anyone right now, not even to Carla.  
  
They get a taxi home, even though it’s maybe a fifteen-minute walk, and the cold air outside instantly sobers her up a little. That doesn’t make the uncomfortable underlying way she’s feeling emotional for no reason (okay, for _many_ reasons) go away, though.  
  
The house is quiet when Polo finally unlocks the door and ushers them in. As they get to Polo’s bedroom upstairs, Lu grabs both of their hands and pulls them inside. She sits down at the end of the bed and looks up at them, still holding one of their hands each as she gives them a pleading look.  
  
“You’re evil,” Polo laughs, and she nods and bites her lip. “Lock the door, Valerio.”  
  
Valerio doesn’t need to be told twice, just giggles menacingly and does as he’s told.  
  
His mothers are probably already asleep in their room on the other side of the house, and Lu is pretty sure she’d cry if the boys turned her down right now.  
  
She falls asleep listening to them quietly whispering to each other and wakes up to Val's face buried against her neck while Polo’s hand is gripping her arm, stretching over Valerio’s sleeping form in between them just to touch her in his sleep.  
  
It’s a pretty great reminder as to why she’s putting up with the horrific social experiment that is staying with Polo’s mothers for the holidays.  
  
**  
  
“Come on, open it,” Valerio says, pushing one of two identical-looking, equally sloppily wrapped presents into each of their hands as they lounge on Polo’s bed.  
  
It’s Christmas Eve, and they’ve successfully finished the somewhat awkward dinner and drinks portion of the evening. Now it’s midnight, and Valerio is trying hard to talk them into opening his gift.  
  
“It's not Christmas morning yet, Val,” Polo says.  
  
Lu pokes Val’s chest and grins. “Let me guess, now you’re gonna tell us about how this is totally a Chilean tradition and we have to go along with it to respect your culture, right?”  
  
He laughs softly and nods. Of course.  
  
“He does this every year,” she informs Polo, who grins at her.  
  
“Well, I guess we better open these then. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I’m being culturally insensitive.”  
  
And okay, Lu really loves presents. Getting them, anyway — she’s not the best at gift-giving. When Val just stares at her, motioning for her to go ahead, she tears through the wrapping paper and hears Polo do the same.  
  
She pushes the wrapping paper out of the way, and laughs out loud as she holds up the contents of the box. It’s a comfortable looking light purple hoodie with the words ‘world’s okayest girlfriend’ printed on it. Polo is laughing next to her, holding up an identical piece of clothing, except his labels him the world’s okayest _boyfriend_.  
  
It’s such a stupid Valerio thing to do, and she’s still laughing when she leans over and kisses him, murmuring an ironic, “Thanks.”  
  
“I figured this was better than matching tattoos.”  
  
Polo chuckles. “Did you get one for yourself?”  
  
Sometimes Lu genuinely wonders how Val still pulls off that careless, boyish smile like he isn’t actually twenty years old and an adult. He has no right to still be this youthful and adorable. Val nods eagerly and gets out another present, wrapped exactly the way the other two were and hands it to them. “But you’ll have to give it to me — otherwise it won’t feel as true.”  
  
“Yeah, not like calling yourself the world’s okayest boyfriend wouldn’t just be an accurate moment of self-reflection,” Lu jokes, but holds onto the present anyway, laughing when Polo does the same. “Here, we _totally_ got you this!”  
  
Val enthusiastically rips open the wrapping paper, then strips off his button-down and puts on the hoodie. It’s a nice color on him.  
  
“You know, since we’re sharing traditions,” Lu murmurs, getting up to rummage through her suitcase on the floor. “We actually exchange gifts on Christmas Eve in Mexico.”  
  
Polo laughs knowingly. “God forbid we disrespect tradition.”  
  
She’s gotten Polo three tickets to a Jack Johnson concert next summer at the o2, and he does actually look like a kid on Christmas morning — or _evening_ — when he unwraps them. The hug he wraps her up in is enthusiastic and tight and she finds herself grinning against his shoulder.  
  
Valerio has been talking her ear off about this Ayurveda yoga retreat in the Himalayas, which apparently combines holistic yoga with spa treatments, and while she obviously didn’t just spend several thousands on sending him there, she did book a spa day for the three of them, and got him a ticket to some two-day conference this famous yogi he likes is holding in February.  
  
Both boys seem completely delighted with her presents, and she’s really, really glad. Gift giving is not really her thing, and she’d agonized over it for weeks — both of them are kind of impossible to shop for, so in the end she figured making it about doing something together was the better call. It’s not like any of them are really hurting for any material thing otherwise.  
  
They’re all wrapped up in each other, just leaning back against the pillows and staring up at the ceiling when Polo lets out a dramatic sigh and reaches for the drawer on his nightstand.  
  
“Well, I say we ignore what my culture dictates and don’t wait until January 6th to open these,” he says, handing them both a small box.  
  
When Lu opens it, she gasps. In the box is a simple thin silver bracelet with three small silver beads on it. It’s classy and timeless and something she probably would have bought herself. Next to her, Valerio is trying and failing to put his own bracelet on his wrist and she rolls her eyes and reaches over to do it for him.  
  
His bracelet is almost identical to hers, except it's a coppery gold, slightly thicker to make it look less dainty. It looks really good on him, and she grins at Polo when Val tells him he loves it.  
  
“You have really good taste in jewelry,” she says, holding her left wrist out to him and watching him close the clasp on her bracelet. That’s when she notices he’s wearing a third version of the bracelet on his right wrist, this one a more faded out silver color.  
  
Polo grins knowingly, leans over to peck her lips as he reaches for Valerio’s hand.  
  
“I have really great taste in a lot of things.”  
  
**  
  
They’re back in London for New Years, and none of them are in the mood to actually party.  
  
Instead, Valerio insists on cooking for them, and the curry he makes turns out surprisingly edible.  
  
When the clock strikes midnight, they’re in the living room, the BBC countdown on TV, and watch the impressive fireworks display over the river through their window — though the views shown on TV are admittedly a little nicer.  
  
All three of them are tipsy on champagne, and Valerio makes a big deal about not wanting to kiss either of them first because he thinks it’s a bad omen, just hugs them both at the same time and kisses both of their cheeks in quick succession.  
  
“You’re ridiculous,” Lu mutters, leaning in for a real kiss, smiling into it when Polo wraps his arms around her from behind. He kisses Val over her shoulder and finally turns her around to kiss her, too.  
  
Valerio pours himself another glass of champagne and grins, a wicked look taking over his face.  
  
"How you start your year decides how awesome the rest of it is gonna be, right?"  


"That's not… I mean, yeah, sort of," Polo says. “Val…”  
  
Valerio’s hand is toying with the back of Lu’s shirt when he says, "So why can't I start it with both of you?"  
  
Lu finds herself biting her lip at that. Sometimes he'll say things like that about she and Polo and she doesn't think she can be held accountable for her actions when he does. She absolutely loves when he puts them on the same level like this.  
  
His logic kind of checks out, at least in her current state of happy inebriation, so that’s how she finds herself dragging both of the boys to their bedroom, getting them undressed not even ten minutes into the new year.  
  
It’s probably a good sign, starting the year like this.  
  
**  
  
She wakes up to Valerio spooning her, Polo’s arm wrapped around her hip and their legs all tangled together, and wishes she could preserve this moment somehow, bottle it up to get out on days where she’s only feeling a fraction of the happiness currently blooming in her chest.  
  
Maybe it's a little fucked up, and maybe it won't last forever, but she loves these two so much it sometimes freaks her out.  


They spend the entire day in bed, occasionally taking turns to grab a snack or a drink.  


She knows they're going to have a good year.  
  
*****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've absolutely loved writing this story. Thank you all so much for reading, leaving kudos and commenting; I'm so glad so many people loved coming along for the ride. It's bittersweet to be done with this story, but who knows, I might eventually revisit this universe for a sequel or a few random snippet style one-shots. 
> 
> In the meantime, feel free to drop by my [tumblr](http://cupcakesarebetter.tumblr.com/) for a chat or any prompts you might have.
> 
> EDIT: I recently wrote a [SEQUEL](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28405647) if you're looking for more trio fluff!

**Author's Note:**

> find me [on tumblr](http://cupcakeb.tumblr.com/)


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